Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[maximara]

At last! An acknowledgement that evidence has been provided. You don't like it. Very well. But it has been produced.

Come on, that is like saying the Protocols of Zion is "evidence" of the whole Jewish conspiracy nonsense or all the eyewitness is "evidence" that aliens really did crash in Roswell, NM. Evidence for those has been presented as well.

Let's remind everyone of what qualifies as good evidence.

1) Contemporary evidence: Evidence that dates to the time the person or event actually happened.

2) Derivative evidence: Evidence that is known to use contemporary record-evidence that has since been lost.

3) Comparative evidence: Evidence that gives details that can be checked against known factors of the time.

Paul could have given us comparative evidence but doesn't and the Gospels' comparative evidence is a disaster.

Evidence has been given? That is only true if you consider evidence on par with that of the Bermuda Triangle or Protocols of Zion.

 

[Brainache]

Come on, that is like saying the Protocols of Zion is "evidence" of the whole Jewish conspiracy nonsense or all the eyewitness is "evidence" that aliens really did crash in Roswell, NM. Evidence for those has been presented as well.

Let's remind everyone of what qualifies as good evidence.

1) Contemporary evidence: Evidence that dates to the time the person or event actually happened.

2) Derivative evidence: Evidence that is known to use contemporary record-evidence that has since been lost.

3) Comparative evidence: Evidence that gives details that can be checked against known factors of the time.

Paul could have given us comparative evidence but doesn't and the Gospels' comparative evidence is a disaster.

Evidence has been given? That is only true if you consider evidence on par with that of the Bermuda Triangle or Protocols of Zion.

Maybe you could share with us the evidence Richard Carrier used to arrive at his "Mythical Jesus" conclusion.

Does he have evidence from some different source that no one has seen before?

 

[dejudge]

Paul could have given us comparative evidence but doesn't and the Gospels' comparative evidence is a disaster.

There is no actual evidence that the Pauline writers could have given us comparative evidence.

Apologetic writers claimed Paul was alive AFTER gLuke and Revelation were composed.

When did Paul really live?

 

[Brainache]

There is no actual evidence that the Pauline writers could have given us comparative evidence.

Apologetic writers claimed Paul was alive AFTER gLuke and Revelation were composed.

When did Paul really live?

Apologetic writers also claimed that Jesus was the Logos son of God and risen from the dead...

I guess we have to believe everything they wrote at face value or discard them completely...

There is no way to critically approach the material in a skeptical way to try to tease actual information from it, is there? If there was such a way, Historians would be using it, wouldn't they?

Oh yeah: Textual Analysis.

Look it up.

 

[dejudge]

Apologetic writers also claimed that Jesus was the Logos son of God and risen from the dead...

I guess we have to believe everything they wrote at face value or discard them completely...

There is no way to critically approach the material in a skeptical way to try to tease actual information from it, is there? If there was such a way, Historians would be using it, wouldn't they?

Oh yeah: Textual Analysis.

Look it up.

You keep repeating the same fallacies. I do not believe the NT stories of Jesus.

You seem to have no idea what "face value" means.

Richard Carrier, an historian, argues that Jesus was a figure of mythology.

I regard the NT stories of Jesus as monstrous fables--a pack of lies and mythology.

It is those who accept the NT or parts of the NT as credible historical sources who take the Jesus story at face value without a shred of supporting evidence.

You seem to have forgotten that Christian Scholars do take the NT stories about Jesus at face value and argue that Jesus of Nazareth was really raised from the dead.

Robert Van Voorst, a Scholar, takes the NT at face value and preached in the Reformed Church of America that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Ratzinger, a Christian Scholar, takes the Jesus stories at face value and preaches that Jesus was the Son of God and resurrected on the third day.

Bart Ehrman, a Professor, takes the NT at face value and argues that Galatians 1.19 is historically accurate.

I do NOT accept any story about Jesus as historically credible at face value.

 

[IanS]

The claimed evidence for Jesus is simply ... utterly hopeless (if it is even "evidence" of the person at all). And that fact is not made any better by saying that people use similarly hopeless evidence for other ancient figures/events..

At last! An acknowledgement that evidence has been provided. You don't like it. Very well. But it has been produced.

You highlighted the word “evidence” where I was referring specifically NOT to Jesus but to other claims in ancient history. Why did you do that? That was not a reference to any claimed evidence of Jesus was it.

You might wish to claim anything as "evidence" for any event or person. But if it’s a written source from thousands of years ago, then your source must be reliable in terms of proven or corroborated accuracy for what it's author says, and it must also be credible in what it says and not claiming things that have since turned out to be impossible.

And in the case of Jesus there is literally NO such reliable or credible written evidence. And no physical archaeological or similar material evidence either.

However, there is an absolute mass of completely unarguable evidence to show why all of that writing about Jesus is highly unreliable to say the least.

It’s true that some written evidence does exist. But it’s written evidence of people religious beliefs (beliefs in the supernatural in fact). None of it is actually evidence of Jesus himself … none of it is evidence that anyone ever reliably wrote to credibly claim they ever met any human Jesus.

 

[Brainache]

You keep repeating the same fallacies. I do not believe the NT stories of Jesus.

You seem to have no idea what "face value" means.

Richard Carrier, an historian, argues that Jesus was a figure of mythology.

I regard the NT stories of Jesus as monstrous fables--a pack of lies and mythology.

It is those who accept the NT or parts of the NT as credible historical sources who take the Jesus story at face value without a shred of supporting evidence.

You seem to have forgotten that Christian Scholars do take the NT stories about Jesus at face value and argue that Jesus of Nazareth was really raised from the dead.

Robert Van Voorst, a Scholar, takes the NT at face value and preached in the Reformed Church of America that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Ratzinger, a Christian Scholar, takes the Jesus stories at face value and preaches that Jesus was the Son of God and resurrected on the third day.

Bart Ehrman, a Professor, takes the NT at face value and argues that Galatians 1.19 is historically accurate.

I do NOT accept any story about Jesus as historically credible at face value.

That is why Historians use Textual Analysis.

You didn't look it up, did you?

How can you claim to know more than the experts on this? Where do you get the idea that you know more than the Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University?

 

[Brainache]

You highlighted the word “evidence” where I was referring specifically NOT to Jesus but to other claims in ancient history. Why did you do that? That was not a reference to any claimed evidence of Jesus was it.

You might wish to claim anything as "evidence" for any event or person. But if it’s a written source from thousands of years ago, then your source must be reliable in terms of proven or corroborated accuracy for what it's author says, and it must also be credible in what it says and not claiming things that have since turned out to be impossible.

And in the case of Jesus there is literally NO such reliable or credible written evidence. And no physical archaeological or similar material evidence either.

However, there is an absolute mass of completely unarguable evidence to show why all of that writing about Jesus is highly unreliable to say the least.

It’s true that some written evidence does exist. But it’s written evidence of people religious beliefs (beliefs in the supernatural in fact). None of it is actually evidence of Jesus himself … none of it is evidence that anyone ever reliably wrote to credibly claim they ever met any human Jesus.

I see that you are still claiming to be an expert in a subject you have never studied.

Why do you do that?

 

[pakeha]

pakeha

Possibly, though we know the Israelites did sacrifice the other creatures mentioned in the verses, don't we?

Yes, but that's good writing. Micah takes his opponents' position, staring from actual examples and building to an extreme, revealing a deep logical flaw in the opponents' thinking. The opponent must agree that the costliness of the sacrifice is not a reliable indicator of its pleasingness to YHWH, since nobody does massive animal sacrifice and YHWH forbids child sacrifice. So what does YHWH want? Not sacrifice (which today is no longer possible under the old law anyway), but a good life on earth, informed by a decent regard for one's fellows....

Thanks for the reply- it made good breakfast fodder.
Good writing or strawmanning or Reductio ad absurdum, as you prefer. In any case, of course Micah is writing far later than those thrillingly primitive times when Israelites may have followed their neighbors practices more closely than they cared to admit in the 6th century.

Micah was a good read, yes. But, as seems usual in these cases, his admonitions fell on deaf ears- Jews continued to sacrifice animals even up to the destruction of the Temple.

Perhaps I'm way wrong (not for the first time), but Jesus was seen in 1st and second century literature as a willing human sacrifice and this identification with human sacrifice didn't cause general revulsion among the early Christians.

Yes, it's dressed as an action of one who lays down their life for another's salvation, thereby layering the imagry of the meek lamb with passive//aggressive heroism.

Yet we have the physical proof this bizarre story appealed to people with the resulting churches and hegemany.
How strange our past is.

 

[eight bits]

pakeha

Perhaps I'm way wrong (not for the first time), but Jesus was seen in 1st and second century literature as a willing human sacrifice and this identification with human sacrifice didn't cause general revulsion among the early Christians.

I think that's because Paul invented something new, at least for the mass market, not a human sacrifice for the benefit of the survivors, but a suicidal-sacrifice that the victim survives physically (pneumally?), but not psychologically. Its relationship to earlier Jewish mythology is the magical "undoing" of the rebellion of The All Mother (who's kidding whom? Her feckless husband was along for the ride - I will never understand what she saw in that guy).

Paul's Jesus does the opposite, rejects the grasping self-help way to godmanhood ("storming heaven," so to speak, found in other myths, both Jewish and pagan), and does it the "right way," fatally empties himself and lets YHWH elevate him (nothing new that elevation is a prerogative of divinity - something our pagan friends would definitely be familiar with as what Odysseus refuses to accept from Calypso - refuses in order to resume his accustomed earthly personal life).

Christ is at least two things in Paul: the legendary Messiah role that Jesus fulfills, and a continuing quality that isn't peculiar to the person of Jesus alone, as in Galatians 2:20,

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.

"I live by faith," I think, is not the familiar Protestant "sinner's prayer" or altar call, nor the busy ritual "bells and smells" activities to which Protestantism is the reaction, but rather personal identification with the qualities of the Christ. Paul didn't "see" Jesus, he became what Jesus had become, the peer of YHWH. The price for that is the death of individual personality ("I have beem crucified with Christ").

That is madness, but a very attractive and heroic sort of madness, as is Odysseus' refusal to have anything to do with it. If you were living the life that Odysseus was, then it might be a hard choice. If you're a slave, or a woman in some cultures, or ... , then madness may be the best offer you've had all day.

 

[zugzwang]

eight bits

Although you can argue that the death of the personality is not madness, but is something that happens all the time, in the sense of ego-death. Eastern religions often focus on this, not as some kind of abnormal Gotterdammerung, but as part of ordinary existence, which normally we don't notice.

But you are probably right that Paul is referring to something more melodramatic, that is, an actual giving up of the self; although it's difficult to see what he is referring to, behind the rhetoric.

I think some of the later Christian mystics saw it in an Eastern manner to an extent; for example, Meister Eckhart says 'the eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me', which seems to involve also some kind of surrender of separateness or ego-identity.

 

[Craig B]

Come on, that is like saying the Protocols of Zion is "evidence" of the whole Jewish conspiracy nonsense or all the eyewitness is "evidence" that aliens really did crash in Roswell, NM ...
Evidence has been given? That is only true if you consider evidence on par with that of the Bermuda Triangle or Protocols of Zion.

I have given evidence and will not be deterred from saying so by this craziness. But you won't look at it; I hope you're not too busy reading the "Protocols"!

 

[pakeha]

pakeha


I think that's because Paul invented something new, at least for the mass market, not a human sacrifice for the benefit of the survivors, but a suicidal-sacrifice that the victim survives physically (pneumally?), but not psychologically. Its relationship to earlier Jewish mythology is the magical "undoing" of the rebellion of The All Mother (who's kidding whom? Her feckless husband was along for the ride - I will never understand what she saw in that guy).

Paul's Jesus does the opposite, rejects the grasping self-help way to godmanhood ("storming heaven," so to speak, found in other myths, both Jewish and pagan), and does it the "right way," fatally empties himself and lets YHWH elevate him (nothing new that elevation is a prerogative of divinity - something our pagan friends would definitely be familiar with as what Odysseus refuses to accept from Calypso - refuses in order to resume his accustomed earthly personal life).

Christ is at least two things in Paul: the legendary Messiah role that Jesus fulfills, and a continuing quality that isn't peculiar to the person of Jesus alone, as in Galatians 2:20,

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.

"I live by faith," I think, is not the familiar Protestant "sinner's prayer" or altar call, nor the busy ritual "bells and smells" activities to which Protestantism is the reaction, but rather personal identification with the qualities of the Christ. Paul didn't "see" Jesus, he became what Jesus had become, the peer of YHWH. The price for that is the death of individual personality ("I have beem crucified with Christ").

That is madness, but a very attractive and heroic sort of madness, as is Odysseus' refusal to have anything to do with it. If you were living the life that Odysseus was, then it might be a hard choice. If you're a slave, or a woman in some cultures, or ... , then madness may be the best offer you've had all day.

As good an analysis of the appeal of early Christianity as I've read to date. Thanks!

 

[eight bits]

pakeha

Thank you for the kind words.

zugzwang

I wouldn't draw the lines geographically, East versus West, since these ideas seem to be everywhere and always, part of the "perennial philosophy," and all that. I don't know a better English word for the quality in question, but maybe madness has too much of the flavor of illness. "We're not in Kansas anymore" is too pat, although its author was a Theosophist, so he may well have intended the now-kitschy phrase just that way. The expereince is overwhelming, and as such is incompatible with ordinary functioning. A fair word is, I think, madness.

It's funny you mention Paul's rhetoric. For whatever reason, the combination of having these expereinces, being articulate and also willing to speak openly about them seems rare. Here's a sample from a modern source, sculptor Jesse Watkins (1899-1980), who had an acute episode of ... call it what you prefer. He was interviewed by the psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who included an edited version as "The Ten Day Journey," chapter 7 of The Politics of Experience.

...I suddenly felt as if time was going back. . . . I had the—had the feeling that . . .I had died. . . . I actually seemed to be wandering in a kind of landscape...desert landscape. . . . I used to sit on my bed and make [a fellow patient] lie down by looking at him and thinking about it, and he used to lie down. . . . I was also aware of a ...higher sphere, as it were . . . another layer of existence lying above...the present. . . . I had feelings of... gods, not only God but gods as it were, of beings which are far above us capable of...dealing with the situation that I was incapable of dealing with, that were in charge and were running things and...at the end of it, everybody had to take on the job at the top...

Change the word choices and cultural references, and we have Paul, who has died, worked signs and wonders, visited a non-earthly realm, communed with powerful beings internediate beween himself and capital-G God, and had the feeling that he must take on the temporal role of God. Everybody must.

There's a religion in there somewhere, I think.

ETA: Watkins chose to return to a more ordinary reality, by reciting a magic spell: his own name (Tennyson famously used the corresponidng spell to travel in the other direction for visits). Looking back, Watkins saw this world differently than before, and thought himself better off for having had the expereince, but he chose as Odysseus chose, and stayed in this world.

 

[zugzwang]

eight bits

I think you are muddying the waters by citing Watkins, who had a well-known psychotic experience, and of course, Laing was a ridiculous romantic about such experiences; fortunately, subsequent psychiatrists and psychologists have not been. It ain't romantic at all; it's often really miserable for the person involved.

Well, we are going well off-topic, but non-dualist experiences are quite different from psychosis. I know a lot of people who have had them, and they are quite sensible people!

In fact, you can reverse this and argue that an obsession with the ego, and the subsequent narcissism, are what is crazy. However, another thread, maybe. It's very difficult to connect this with people like Paul, but perhaps one can see elements of it in people like Meister Eckhart, Traherne, Simone Weil, etc., but the Christian mystics have to concretize or historicize it all, which seems bizarre to me. Ah, is this an argument against HJ? Dunno.

 

[eight bits]

zugzwang

I think you are muddying the waters by citing Watkins, who had a well-known psychotic experience, ...

You don't seriously propose that I am the first person at JREF to conjecture that Paul had a well-known psychotic break?. Watkins gives us an opportunity to examine such experience from an articulate source who isn't trying to sell us a lifestyle.

Laing's role in this was as reporter. It really doesn't matter to my purposes what Laing thought about it. I do think he was honest in the usual scientist's sense, and so I accept his hearsay, and believe that I do have Watkins' report in his own words; edited, of course. (We may also owe Laing thanks that Watkins was observed, rather than treated, during the crisis.)

As to the water, lol, we find in Paul some very muddy water indeed. I doubt I made it worse, since that is barely possible. Speaking of water,

It's very difficult to connect this with people like Paul, ...

Unless you are going to argue cryptomnesia on Watkins' part, their words betray that he and Paul have been drinking from the same well. I avoided Christian mystics for the very reason that they ought to sound like Paul. Some even have "spiritual advisors" who see that they stay on message. Jesse, like Paul, went swimming on his own. In my view, that encourages the mud to settle out some.

Ah, is this an argument against HJ?

It's not an argument for or agianst HJ. Paul's letters are, however, the only first-person account we have of anything early enough to make much difference. Understanding what Paul's talking about, and why anybody bought what he was selling, can't hurt, in my view, and might help.

 

[dejudge]

You keep repeating the same fallacies. I do not believe the NT stories of Jesus.

You seem to have no idea what "face value" means.

Richard Carrier, an historian, argues that Jesus was a figure of mythology.

I regard the NT stories of Jesus as monstrous fables--a pack of lies and mythology.

It is those who accept the NT or parts of the NT as credible historical sources who take the Jesus story at face value without a shred of supporting evidence.

You seem to have forgotten that Christian Scholars do take the NT stories about Jesus at face value and argue that Jesus of Nazareth was really raised from the dead.

Robert Van Voorst, a Scholar, takes the NT at face value and preached in the Reformed Church of America that Jesus was raised from the dead.

Ratzinger, a Christian Scholar, takes the Jesus stories at face value and preaches that Jesus was the Son of God and resurrected on the third day.

Bart Ehrman, a Professor, takes the NT at face value and argues that Galatians 1.19 is historically accurate.

I do NOT accept any story about Jesus as historically credible at face value.

That is why Historians use Textual Analysis.

You didn't look it up, did you?

How can you claim to know more than the experts on this? Where do you get the idea that you know more than the Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University?

You keep repeating the same fallacies.

1. You keep forgetting that Richard Carrier is an historian.

2. You keep forgetting that Richard Carrier attended a University.

3. You keep forgetting that Richard Carrier argues that Jesus was a figure of mythology.
4. Robert Eisenman is an historian .

5. Robert Eisenmsn attended a University.

6. Robert Eisenman has admitted that NO-ONE has EVER solved the HJ Question.
It should be obvious to you that there is NO evidence from antiquity for an HJ in any UNIVERSTITY.

Please, go to your nearest University.

You won't find any evidence for an HJ.

All we have from those who attended University are multiple irreconcilable assumed versions of an HJ without any actual supporting evidence.

There may be more versions of an HJ than Universities.

 

[Belz...]

You keep repeating the same fallacies.

1. You keep forgetting that Richard Carrier is an historian.

2. You keep forgetting that Richard Carrier attended a University.

3. You keep forgetting that Richard Carrier argues that Jesus was a figure of mythology.

You keep forgetting to stop repeating yourself.

 

[maximara]

Then he was repeating it at Annals 15.44. Nothing I have said indicates that this passage is a "forgery" as dejudge contends, or that my opinion in the matter is a "big lie". I think your stuff about Osiris is nonsensical drivel, but that is very far from implying that I don't think you sincerely believe what you say about it.

Serapis is the Greek term for Osiris and a supposed 134 CE letter Hadrian to Servianus documents this:

"Egypt, which you commended to me, my dearest Servianus, I have found to be wholly fickle and inconsistent, and continually wafted about by every breath of fame. The worshipers of Serapis (here) are called Chrestians, and those who are devoted to the god Serapis (I find), call themselves Bishops of Chrestus are, in fact, devotees of Serapis. There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Chrestian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer. Even the Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Chrestus. They are a folk most seditious, most deceitful, most given to injury; but their city is prosperous, rich, and fruitful, and in it no one is idle." (Drews, Arthur (1912) The witnesses to the historicity of Jesus)

The interesting part here is there is a variant of this where Chrestians is Christians and Chrestus is Christ. As you keep saying "evidence has been presented"

 

[Brainache]

Serapis is the Greek term for Osiris and a supposed 134 CE letter Hadrian to Servianus documents this:

"Egypt, which you commended to me, my dearest Servianus, I have found to be wholly fickle and inconsistent, and continually wafted about by every breath of fame. The worshipers of Serapis (here) are called Chrestians, and those who are devoted to the god Serapis (I find), call themselves Bishops of Chrestus are, in fact, devotees of Serapis. There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Chrestian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer. Even the Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Chrestus. They are a folk most seditious, most deceitful, most given to injury; but their city is prosperous, rich, and fruitful, and in it no one is idle." (Drews, Arthur (1912) The witnesses to the historicity of Jesus)

The interesting part here is there is a variant of this where Chrestians is Christians and Chrestus is Christ. As you keep saying "evidence has been presented"

What?

How is that evidence for what you claim?

The Emperor describes the worshippers of Serapis and Chrestians/Christians, as two separate groups, equally as superstitious as each other. How can this be evidence that they are one and the same?

You have been asked this before, but I don't recall your answer.