What proportion of physicists have qualifications in biology? You're poisoning the well by asserting that there is a 'mainstream, secular' version of history and Biblical Studies lies outside this. Biblical Studies *is* mainstream, secular history in that it uses precisely the same models as other ancient historical disciplines such as classics and seeks after the truth, just as they do. It isn't a particular, religiously-biased case.
I don’t know what proportion of physicists have qualifications in Biology. Why did you ask that? What has that got to do with Jesus? What has it got to do with what I asked you? I asked you how many of the people being called Historians here, are actually bible studies scholars … that’s a very different question to your mention of physicists vs. biologists.
Look - I listed the names of various people who have been cited here amongst “Historians” who all agree that Jesus was a real human person. Do you accept that those named people are in fact NOT “Historians” in the usual sense of that university discipline? Because if you don’t accept that then you cannot admit proven facts - as I showed here several times before all of those individuals teach bible studies, not history. And they are all qualified in biblical studies, NOT mainstream history.
You mentioned Robin Lane Fox as a genuine Historian who has written a book saying he thinks Jesus was real. Fine, I will discuss that in due course below.
But nobody is poisoning any well here on the sceptic side.
However, Bible Studies is NOT “mainstream history”. Those individuals who were named here before as "Historians" writing to say Jesus was real, eg Bart Ehrman and the rest, are specifically studying Jesus and the religious history of Judeo-Christian religious belief. That is emphatically NOT “mainstream history”. Afaik, most university historians do not study Jesus or religious belief at all.
As far as the methods of mainstream history vs. methods used in biblical history are concerned - the problem is not whether or not they use the same sort of methods. The problem is that in the case of the historicity of Jesus, there is no independent evidential material outside of the bible. That is the sole and entire body of written ancient belief that you have to work with. That is just not good enough as a source of reliable or credible evidence for what it claims about Jesus, no matter what methods you apply to it.
In other branches of ancient history, for example in the case of Roman emperors from that same period in time, historians do have a huge amount of far more credible and convincing evidence to work with, including museums stuffed full of archaeological remains of all sorts. But none of that exists in the case of Jesus. Nothing but a collection preaching pericopes from religious fanatics who had never known any human messiah at all.
Why don't ancient historians publish translations and critical analyses of Plato's writings? It must be because they don't think Plato existed, or think the Republic is a load of rubbish that isn't worth bothering with, right? No, it's because this isn't their field. They let the Classicists do that. Then if they are working on Plato from a historian's (rather than a textual scholar or Classicist) perspective they might well find the Classicist's work comes in rather handy.
Bible studies scholars and theologians who generally try to study the historicity of Jesus, might very well find they can make use of studies by historians and others who have studied the written and archaeological evidence from all sorts of events of that broad period of time, from long before Jesus until long after. That’s fine. But the problem is - the only actual mention of Jesus at all, comes entirely from the bible.
So no matter what evidence you have about any other issues or events of that period, the problem in the case of Jesus is that you really have no indication at all of his existence except for the overtly religious preaching which comprises an entirely religious written work called the Bible.
And that bible is simply not credible as evidence in what it says about the certainty of religious belief in their long awaited messiah of God. What it says there about Jesus is that none of the writers ever knew this person in any way at all, but they believed as a matter of legend from what was thought to have been believed by other unknown people, that a long awaited messiah from God had once appeared on earth as a supernatural figure. That is not a credible description of a human figure who has no other external or independent corroboration at all.
Similarly, ancient historians don't publish translations or analyses of Biblical texts because it isn't their field. They leave that up to the Biblical scholars. Then, if they happen to be working on, say, the history of the Ancient Near East in the 7th century BCE they might well find Biblical scholars' analyses of the exilic literature to be helpful.
Indeed, and that’s the point here - the “ancient historians” you are talking of, or as they have been labelled here just “Historians” in general, do not normally study the history of Jesus. The people that are commonly quoted in these threads as “Historians“, such as Bart Ehrman, Dominic Crossan, Elaine Pagels, Bruce Metzger, John Huddleston, E.P. Sanders etc. are bible studies scholars of various types … they are not mainstream secular university historians. And if you doubt that, then just check their academic qualifications and their teaching posts in wikipedia (it will take you all of 5 minutes).
Similarly, Biblical scholars rely on ancient historians for knowledge of, for instance, economic or social factors of the period when the Biblical books were written. Specialists in, say, first-century Palestine might sit in an ancient history or a Biblical Studies department, depending on their emphasis and how that university precisely organises itself. There is certainly interchange between the two. And whichever department they find themselves in, the Bible will be an important source text for them.
Of, of course, I’m sure bible studies scholars wish to use whatever has been published by other historians investigating similar periods in history. I’m not saying that people like John Huddleston are complete lightweight religious charlatans. I’m simply pointing out that it is highly misleading to claim, as has been repeatedly done in all these threads, that all of these people writing about beliefs in a real Jesus are “expert academic HISTORIANS”. they are NOT. They are mainly bible studies scholars of various types, and they are specifically studying religious writing pertaining to religious beliefs in Judeo-Christian religious history.
And to repeat - in the case of Jesus, the evidential material which they have to work from, is only the NT Bible. And that is emphatically not a reliable source of objective impartial evidence about their long awaited messiah of God.
Robin Lane Fox is one example: a bona fide ancient historian, Fellow of New College Oxford, he not only uses the Bible as an important source text in his work but was so interested in it he even wrote a book about it (Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible) in which he tries to get at the history behind the Biblical stories. In it he demolishes the historical case for, for instance, the census at Jesus's birth, which comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention in Biblical Studies for the past two centuries or so. But he certainly thinks there was a historical Jesus and discusses him at great length. Lane Fox is an atheist.
I don’t know what Robin lane Fox’s academic qualifications actually are, do you? But as I said earlier (several times) it would be amazing if out of tens of thousands of academics writing to say they believed Jesus was real, you could not find at least some who are genuine historians. But if Dr Fox says that Jesus was real, then what does he cite as evidence of a real living Jesus? Do you know? Please don’t tell me it’s the bible!
The problem is that like, biblical scholars, he is confined entirely to the biblical writing about the belief that highly religious 1st century Jews had in an prophesised Old Testament messiah figure that none of them had ever known as a real living human in any way at all.
That biblical writing would itself be ruled out entirely in most objective fields of study as completely and obviously unreliable on the basis of it’s constant claims of the supernatural. That is very clearly NOT a work of factual history.
It’s not for example, even a work which the anonymous bible authors themselves could claim to know as history … eg the gospel authors were obtaining their Jesus beliefs from other unnamed unknown religious sources who themselves only believed in a Jesus figure known to them as a religious OT legend from yet earlier even more anonymous story-tellers who were somehow thought to have known what people claimed to be the “disciples” had once claimed … though none of those individuals, either the writers or their sources, are known to anyone! And as far as Paul’s letters are concerned, he repeatedly insists that he knew Jesus only from his beliefs in Old testament scripture written centuries before.
That is not a credible evidential basis on which to state any objective belief in the described supernatural figure of Jesus. Even though, Bart Ehrman, the most often quoted & supposedly greatest academic historian expert on Jesus, does in fact rely entirely on the bible, saying that his evidence is that he believes what was written in the 3rd century copies of Paul’s letters where in one single line it says “save James, the Lords brother”, and where he further claims that the 4 canonical gospels can be counted as 7 independent attestations to Jesus, and where he then says that 7 independent sources is unusually good evidence in ancient history studies and that make Jesus especially well “attested“ and convincing as a real person.
That would not pass as objective academic scholarship/research in any serious field of university research. Certainly it would be a laughable joke if anyone in science tried to claim anything remotely like that as credible evidence of a real person. So what is Dr Fox claiming to have as evidence convincing him of Jesus, if it is not yet again that same NT bible?
And if Dr. Fox’s source is the Bible, then frankly his only primary source is useless as objective credible evidence … except perhaps in the field of wishful thinking of religious beliefs.
