Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[zugzwang]

But ancient people saw lots of things and people as supernaturally endowed - for example, the weather, the seasons, life events, birth and death, children arriving, the local priest, the local preacher, the coming of rain, the droughts. We don't conclude from this that these things didn't happen; rather that this is the way in which people saw stuff. I don't think the distinction between natural and supernatural would have meant all that much at the time. The natural was supernatural.

 

[IanS]

But ancient people saw lots of things and people as supernaturally endowed - for example, the weather, the seasons, life events, birth and death, children arriving, the local priest, the local preacher, the coming of rain, the droughts. We don't conclude from this that these things didn't happen; rather that this is the way in which people saw stuff. I don't think the distinction between natural and supernatural would have meant all that much at the time. The natural was supernatural.

Are you comparing the weather and the existence of children to someone seen to be walking on water and raising people who had been dead and buried for three days?

Children did exist even in biblical times. And the weather also existed every day & night in 1st century Judea.

If, in the 1st century, they described entirely natural events such as rain, as a "miracle , then the rather obvious and pertinent difference is that today we certainly know it did not require God to perform a miracle to make it rain in biblical times.

But the complete opposite is true of the Jesus miracles. Namely - in biblical times people really did believe miracle stories like those about Jesus. But the difference is that today we know those stories are entirely untrue - those miracles never happened. It really did rain, but it was not a miracle. But Jesus certainly never raised any dead or walked on any water, because that certainly would have needed an impossible miracle from God.

 

[maximara]

I can understand why you are stuggling with the concepts here but there is no methodology you can use to establish cause in this sense. Scientific investigation works on the basis of an assumption of naturalism. All events might be 'caused' by something supernatural though I think once you posit the supernatural, it invalidates all use of the idea of cause and effect, since they are naturalist concepts.

Actually that is NOT accurate as demonstrated by actual anthropological studies. "Anthropologists from Frazer to Levi-Strauss have attempted to trace the genealogy of science and have found its foundations, paradoxically, in the realms of primitive magic and comparative religion. Their absorbing studies have shown how notions of physical causation, empirical observation, or rational deduction – the mainstay of science – are equally prevalent in natural magic." (Magic, Religion, and Science Course Number: 189 University of California, Berkeley)

Take ghosts for example. In the 17th century it was suggested they were 4 dimensional beings.

Now look at how Carl Sagan in the print version of Cosmos pg 219 using Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland as his foundation said about fourth-dimension beings: "If a fourth-dimension creature existed it could, in our three-dimensional universe, appear and dematerialize at will, change shape remarkably, pluck us out of locked rooms, and make us appear from nowhere."

That is a perfectly scientific explanation for ghosts. But as a general rule it is said ghosts don't exist. Why? Because two hallmarks of science over magic or religion is 1) a method by which a hypothesis can be tested and 2) using Occam's razor that the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be the one selected.

Right now the more moderate HJ and MJ hypothesizes have equal validity.

 

[dejudge]

But ancient people saw lots of things and people as supernaturally endowed - for example, the weather, the seasons, life events, birth and death, children arriving, the local priest, the local preacher, the coming of rain, the droughts. We don't conclude from this that these things didn't happen; rather that this is the way in which people saw stuff. I don't think the distinction between natural and supernatural would have meant all that much at the time. The natural was supernatural.

So, you why don't you argue that Satan the Devil was really just a man, or that the Angel Gabriel was a messenger and the God of the Jews was just a King?

The God of the Jews, the angel Gabriel and Satan the Devil are in the same sources that mention Jesus of Nazareth.

In fact, Jesus of Nazareth conversed with Satan the Devil at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to Mary in the same NT stories.

If the natural was the supernatural then Satan the Devil, the Angel Gabriel and the God of the Jews were just as historical as HJ.

It is most amusing that you would claim the natural was the supernatural in antiquity when what you say is an open blatant fallacy.

We have copies of writings from Josephus, Philo, Tacitus, Suetonius, Cassius Dio and others and it shows that what you say is just total propaganda.

Non-Apologetic writers of antiquity did write historical accounts of the 1st century because many of them have been corroborated by archaeological evidence and artifacts.

Jesus of Nazareth, the disciples and Paul must have been unknown because they are not recorded in any Natural contemporary history.

In contemporary Natural History, the supernatural myth entities may be acknowledged but never Jesus.

Jesus of Nazareth is neither mentioned as supernatural or natural.

Jesus of Nazareth was unknown.

 

[zugzwang]

IanS wrote:

But the complete opposite is true of the Jesus miracles. Namely - in biblical times people really did believe miracle stories like those about Jesus. But the difference is that today we know those stories are entirely untrue - those miracles never happened. It really did rain, but it was not a miracle. But Jesus certainly never raised any dead or walked on any water, because that certainly would have needed an impossible miracle from God.

But it's the same argument, isn't it? The Bible says that God sent the rain - but this doesn't mean that it didn't rain. Similarly, studies in Judaism seem to show that people saw charismatic preachers as wonder-workers, carrying out healing, exorcism, and other miracles. But this doesn't mean that they didn't exist.

In fact, the same is true today - go to India, where there are tons of reputed miracle workers, who can supposedly translocate, materialize stuff, turn water into petrol, and so on. Does this mean that they don't exist? No.

Because the miracles don't actually happen, doesn't mean that the supposed miracle worker doesn't exist.

 

[pakeha]

Hi pakeha - you mean would Paul count as someone who witnessed a HJ? Answer, no he would not.

Paul only claimed to have seen a vision of a supernatural Jesus (a Jesus figure who returns to life from three days of being dead).

I cant’ think of anyone at that time (or at any time) who ever wrote to credibly claim they had ever met a living Jesus, can you?

No, indeed I cannot.
People who wrote they believed in a supernatural Jesus, yes.

But ancient people saw lots of things and people as supernaturally endowed - for example, the weather, the seasons, life events, birth and death, children arriving, the local priest, the local preacher, the coming of rain, the droughts. We don't conclude from this that these things didn't happen; rather that this is the way in which people saw stuff. I don't think the distinction between natural and supernatural would have meant all that much at the time. The natural was supernatural.

Of course.
Still, the gullibility of people, ancient or otherwise, is something we have to factor in when considering their testimony, don't we?
You might enjoy reading this article by dr. Carrier
http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html

Here's a sample:
"...The biographer Plutarch, a contemporary of Josephus, engages in a lengthy digression to prove that a statue of Tyche did not really speak in the early Republic (Life of Coriolanus 37.3). He claims it must have been a hallucination inspired by the deep religious faith of the onlookers, since there were, he says, too many reliable witnesses to dismiss the story as an invention (38.1-3). He even digresses further to explain why other miracles such as weeping or bleeding--even moaning--statues could be explained as natural phenomena, showing a modest but refreshing degree of skeptical reasoning that would make the Amazing Randi proud. What is notable is not that Plutarch proves himself to have some good sense, but that he felt it was necessary to make such an argument at all. Clearly, such miracles were still reported and believed in his own time. I find this to be a particularly interesting passage, since we have thousands of believers flocking to weeping and bleeding statues even today."


However we assess human credulity, past or present, how do we assess those who found a cult upon a "resurrection" and preach the "good news" to the gullible?

 

[zugzwang]

pakeha

Yes, one of the tasks of historians is to assess various records and reports, as to the likely degree of nonsense as against veracity, in them. In ancient history, this is particularly so, since there can easily be a mixture of both.

But IanS and dejudge seem to be using an argument of the form:

'Jesus was reputed to walk on water/heal people/exorcise people/levitate, therefore he didn't exist'.

This seems to be a logic fail to me.

 

[Brainache]

...

But without going over the off-topic part of that issue again - the problem with anyone talking about a HJ rather than the supernatural figure described in the bible, is (and this has been pointed out many times before without anyone here providing any adequate answer, explanation or justification for the proposed HJ), that the idea of a HJ appears to be nothing more than that, i.e. just an idea invented in relatively recent times (e.g., say, circa.1700-1900), apparently only as a response after modern science increasingly began to show that the supernatural claims which fill the biblical description of Jesus, are almost certainly untrue (i.e., physically impossible) ...

... only then, for that reason (apparently) was 1700+ years of religious insistence on a miraculous Jesus, changed to propose the idea of a "historical" Jesus, apparently created from the biblical Jesus (which is the only Jesus anyone ever actually claimed to know anything about at the time) by simply deleting all the numerous miracle claims and other fantastic parts of the story which Christians, theologians and bible scholars could no longer support without looking increasingly isolated as part of a lunatic fringe.

But that must immediately raise two questions that are in vital need of credible answers from anyone who claims to believe in a HJ. Namely -

1. What was the justification for simply deleting all the various descriptions of Jesus that were originally claimed, but which by about 1700-1900 had been shown to be untrue fiction? On what basis were all those numerous parts of the Jesus simply removed?

2. Where did this hypothetical HJ person come from if not from the bible? The invented idea of a HJ is simply the same biblical non-HJ, but with all the apparently impossible fictional parts discarded. But who ever claimed to witness any HJ? Nobody! The only people who ever claimed at the actual time to know about Jesus all swore total certainty to a demonstrably supernatural NON-HJ ... that is the only Jesus ever described by anyone of the time, i.e. very much a NON-HJ.

Are you comparing the weather and the existence of children to someone seen to be walking on water and raising people who had been dead and buried for three days?

Children did exist even in biblical times. And the weather also existed every day & night in 1st century Judea.

If, in the 1st century, they described entirely natural events such as rain, as a "miracle , then the rather obvious and pertinent difference is that today we certainly know it did not require God to perform a miracle to make it rain in biblical times.

But the complete opposite is true of the Jesus miracles. Namely - in biblical times people really did believe miracle stories like those about Jesus. But the difference is that today we know those stories are entirely untrue - those miracles never happened. It really did rain, but it was not a miracle. But Jesus certainly never raised any dead or walked on any water, because that certainly would have needed an impossible miracle from God.

You've been debating this subject for years and you've never heard of the Ebionites?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites

The Ebionites are described as emphasizing the oneness of God and the humanity of Jesus as the biological son of both Mary and Joseph, who by virtue of his righteousness, was chosen by God to be the messianic "prophet like Moses" (foretold in Deuteronomy 18:14–22) when he was anointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism.[4] Origen (Contra Celsum 5.61)[55] and Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica 3.27.3) recognize some variation in the Christology of Ebionite groups; for example that while all Ebionites denied Christ's pre-existence there was a sub-group which did not deny the virgin birth.[56] Theodoret, while dependent on earlier writers,[57] draws the conclusion that the two sub-groups would have used different Gospels.[58]

 

[maximara]

pakeha

Yes, one of the tasks of historians is to assess various records and reports, as to the likely degree of nonsense as against veracity, in them. In ancient history, this is particularly so, since there can easily be a mixture of both.

But IanS and dejudge seem to be using an argument of the form:

'Jesus was reputed to walk on water/heal people/exorcise people/levitate, therefore he didn't exist'.

This seems to be a logic fail to me.

I agree. Look at the story of Davy Crockett and the Frozen Dawn:

One winter, it was so cold that the dawn froze solid. The sun got caught between two ice blocks, and the earth iced up so much that it couldn't turn. The first rays of sunlight froze halfway over the mountain tops. They looked like yellow icicles dripping towards the ground.

Now Davy Crockett was headed home after a successful night hunting when the dawn froze up so solid. Being a smart man, he knew he had to do something quick or the earth was a goner. He had a freshly killed bear on his back, so he whipped it off, climbed right up on those rays of sunlight and began beating the hot bear carcass against the ice blocks which were squashing the sun. Soon a gush of hot oil burst out of the bear and it melted the ice. Davy gave the sun a good hard kick to get it started, and the sun's heat unfroze the earth and started it spinning again. So Davy lit his pipe on the sun, shouldered the bear, slid himself down the sun rays before they melted and took a bit of sunrise home in his pocket.

The story is fantastical nonsense from start to finish but it shows why throwing out the story of Jesus just on the merits of the supernatural is a majorly bad idea.

Instead of focusing on the supernatural stuff focus on the mundane issues the story has.

1) Why does Paul relate so little tangible regarding Jesus if he supposedly met his brother James?

2) If Jesus did speak to large groups why is there no contemporary record of these speeches?

3) Why are the Jews set up as the fall guys for the death of Jesus when Pontius Pilate could have been used especially as nobody either Roman (Agrippa to Philo in his letter) or Jew (Josephus) seemed to have anything good to say about the guy?

4) Why does the Jesus set c100 BCE idea (documented clear into the 2nd century CE according to Price) even exist if Jesus being in the 1st century CE was a well known fact?

5) Why does every time Gospels and Act comes to something we can actually check against history they spectacularly fail?

 

[tsig]

pakeha

Yes, one of the tasks of historians is to assess various records and reports, as to the likely degree of nonsense as against veracity, in them. In ancient history, this is particularly so, since there can easily be a mixture of both.

But IanS and dejudge seem to be using an argument of the form:

'Jesus was reputed to walk on water/heal people/exorcise people/levitate, therefore he didn't exist'.

This seems to be a logic fail to me.

How about, "we have no reliable evidence of his existence therefore we can't say he existed."

 

[Brainache]

...
Instead of focusing on the supernatural stuff focus on the mundane issues the story has.

1) Why does Paul relate so little tangible regarding Jesus if he supposedly met his brother James?

Because Paul's Theology was fundamentally opposed to that of James and Jesus.

2) If Jesus did speak to large groups why is there no contemporary record of these speeches?

Because film and recording technology hadn't been invented?

Because all of the records in Palestine were destroyed by the Jewish - Roman war?

Because they were transmitted as oral history and eventually written down as "The Sermon On The Mount" or "The Sermon On The Plain" or "The Gospel Of Thomas".

What do you want? A personally autographed copy of his lecture notes?

3) Why are the Jews set up as the fall guys for the death of Jesus when Pontius Pilate could have been used especially as nobody either Roman (Agrippa to Philo in his letter) or Jew (Josephus) seemed to have anything good to say about the guy?

Because Paul was in cahoots with the Roman Authorities and the Herodians.

4) Why does the Jesus set c100 BCE idea (documented clear into the 2nd century CE according to Price) even exist if Jesus being in the 1st century CE was a well known fact?

Is this that Julius Archelaus nonsense that was debunked ages ago?

5) Why does every time Gospels and Act comes to something we can actually check against history they spectacularly fail?

Because they are anti-semitic propaganda written by Roman Christians, more concerned with Theology than History.

 

[pakeha]

pakeha

Yes, one of the tasks of historians is to assess various records and reports, as to the likely degree of nonsense as against veracity, in them. In ancient history, this is particularly so, since there can easily be a mixture of both.

But IanS and dejudge seem to be using an argument of the form:

'Jesus was reputed to walk on water/heal people/exorcise people/levitate, therefore he didn't exist'.

This seems to be a logic fail to me.

Of course you're right.
However, in the case of Jesus we have neither records nor reports, do we?
IIRC, we just have gospels, a sub-genre of hagiography and other pious literature.

If IanS or dejudge were using such an argument, of course it would be a logic fail on their part.
However, neither of them are using this argument, AFAIK.

 

[IanS]

IanS wrote:



But it's the same argument, isn't it?

No, lol .... No, it's not remotely the same argument. The total opposite in fact!

The rain is real. We know that know (whatever anyone thought in the 1st century).

But walking on water and raising the dead was never real (whatever anyone thought of it in the first century).


Do you believe it really rained in the first century? Yes?
Do you believe God made it rain? Yes?

Do you believe people walked on water in the first century? Yes?
Do you believe God caused people to walk on water? Yes?

 

[IanS]

No, indeed I cannot.
People who wrote they believed in a supernatural Jesus, yes.

You will have to explain the highlighted part to me.

Do you mean that people who wrote about a supernatural Jesus, really believed there had been a supernatural Jesus? In which case, I expect that is true.

Or do you mean that people who wrote about a supernatural Jesus, believed they had seen a living human Jesus? Because afaik there is no evidence of anyone credibly writing to say they had ever seen a living human Jesus.

 

[IanS]

pakeha

Yes, one of the tasks of historians is to assess various records and reports, as to the likely degree of nonsense as against veracity, in them. In ancient history, this is particularly so, since there can easily be a mixture of both.

But IanS and dejudge seem to be using an argument of the form:

'Jesus was reputed to walk on water/heal people/exorcise people/levitate, therefore he didn't exist'.

This seems to be a logic fail to me.

That's not what I have ever argued here. And that actual point has in fact been pressed here as an accusation several times, and refuted with same explanation each time. Namely -

- what I am saying is that biblical stories which repeatedly make untrue fictional claims of Jesus doing all sorts of impossible things, render that biblical writing unreliable and not credible as a source. And especially so since none of those biblical writers (all of whom were anonymous) ever actually knew Jesus anyway ... they were just repeating legendary religious messiah stories which had told of a constantly miraculous Jesus ... stories which at the time contained the very miracle elements which no doubt "proved" to people that the stories must certainly be true and that a figure so wonderfully miraculous must truly have been the real messiah of God.

But those are the same elements which now "prove" to all educated sane people in the 21st century that the Jesus stories were untrue and that non-witnessing anonymous biblical authors were neither reliable as sources of information and not remotely credible in what they continually swore to be true.

And that, appears to be the sum total of the Jesus evidence! Just that wildly incredible and demonstrably unreliable hearsay biblical writing of the repeatedly impossible. On that alone, we are told we should believe Jesus existed. Because there is no other credible writing from any other non-biblical source of the time where any author credibly claims ever to have known Jesus or to be reliably quoting any source who had known Jesus.

 

[dejudge]

Because the miracles don't actually happen, doesn't mean that the supposed miracle worker doesn't exist.

It doesn't mean a miracle worker did exist when there is no evidence of the miracle worker and no evidence of the miracles.

Asclepius was a healer in the 1st century.

It doesn't mean Asclepius existed.

Asclepius was a Myth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asclepius

The rod of Asclepius, a snake-entwined staff, remains a symbol of medicine today

It is just totally illogical to assume a miracle worker existed without a shred of contemporary evidence.

 

[Brainache]

That's not what I have ever argued here. And that actual point has in fact been pressed here as an accusation several times, and refuted with same explanation each time. Namely -

- what I am saying is that biblical stories which repeatedly make untrue fictional claims of Jesus doing all sorts of impossible things, render that biblical writing unreliable and not credible as a source. And especially so since none of those biblical writers (all of whom were anonymous) ever actually knew Jesus anyway ... they were just repeating legendary religious messiah stories which had told of a constantly miraculous Jesus ... stories which at the time contained the very miracle elements which no doubt "proved" to people that the stories must certainly be true and that a figure so wonderfully miraculous must truly have been the real messiah of God.

But those are the same elements which now "prove" to all educated sane people in the 21st century that the Jesus stories were untrue and that non-witnessing anonymous biblical authors were neither reliable as sources of information and not remotely credible in what they continually swore to be true.

And that, appears to be the sum total of the Jesus evidence! Just that wildly incredible and demonstrably unreliable hearsay biblical writing of the repeatedly impossible. On that alone, we are told we should believe Jesus existed. Because there is no other credible writing from any other non-biblical source of the time where any author credibly claims ever to have known Jesus or to be reliably quoting any source who had known Jesus.

You know that all of that supernatural stuff about Jesus is very much like all of the supernatural things people said about Pythagoras.

What is the difference? All ancient texts include supernatural nonsense, the bible is not special in that way.

Do you think we have contemporary first hand objective accounts of the life of Pythagoras? We don't.

Why aren't you outraged about that?

 

[dejudge]

Why does every time Gospels and Act comes to something we can actually check against history they spectacularly fail?

Because they are anti-semitic propaganda written by Roman Christians, more concerned with Theology than History.

Your statement is really worthless propaganda. You have no contemporary evidence at all that Roman Christians wrote the Gospels and Acts.

 

[Brainache]

Your statement is really worthless propaganda. You have no contemporary evidence at all that Roman Christians wrote the Gospels and Acts.

Except for the content of the texts themselves.

Who do you think wrote them?

Egyptian Pagans?

Chinese Whisperers?

 

[Brainache]

Your statement is really worthless propaganda. You have no contemporary evidence at all that Roman Christians wrote the Gospels and Acts.

Here dejudge, read this Blog, it is written by a Historian:
http://blogs.jpost.com/content/pauls-comrade-arms-epaphroditus-and-first-gospels-0

Most reading this blog probably never heard of Epaphroditus. He is mentioned twice in Paul's Philippians and by Josephus - who dedicates his Antiquities to him - and by other Roman historians of the time. Josephus makes it clear he was his patron, but to understand his importance, one should probably start with the interesting series of events leading up to and after the death of 'Jesus'' "brother" James presumably in 62 CE, three and a half years before the outbreak of the Uprising against Rome (Daniel 12:7-13's sequentiality?), which help illumine this period.

Actually, one should probably start in the previous generation with the confrontation in Caesarea over barring foreigners from the Temple - in this instance, including what we should probably always refer to as "Herodians" - between someone Josephus calls "Simon the Head of an Assembly (or "Church") of his of his own in Jerusalem" (the Gospels' "Simon Peter"?) and Agrippa I (36-44 CE). Agrippa, being an "Herodian" - even though his grandfather "Herod" (37 BC-4 CE) was largely responsible for building this Temple - was for this "Simon" obviously to be considered "a foreigner" too.

This first "Agrippa" was a grandson of Herod's Maccabean wife "Mariamme" (the first of the many "Mary"s?) - who died under mysterious circumstances in 44 CE (referred to in both Acts and Josephus - probably poisoned) - and the scion of the only line "Jews" might have considered "legitimate", because of his "Jewish" ancestry. For his part, Agrippa treated ths "Simon" with "his own Assembly in Jerusalem", who wanted to "bar him from the Temple", kindly and sent him away with gifts (Josephus actually denotes "Agrippa", "chrestos"/"gentle"). For these purposes, we should always remember Agrippa I and Agrippa II were different...