Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[proudfootz]

I think you are mistaking what the skeptics are saying. There would be NO reasonable thinking skeptic who would say that the lack of evidence for HJ is proof that HJ could never have existed.

Indeed, there may well have been a number of obscure preachers around the turn of the first century.

Indeed, one or more of them may have been named Jesus, after all, it was a common enough name.

The problem is, there is no PROOF. There is not a single contemporaneous document or piece of writing or even a third hand account that names him as a real person. All accounts of the alleged life of HJ come from many years after the events of the time.

IMO, the HJ story suffers from similar difficulties to that of the legend of Robin Hood; as single entities, they are fictional characters made up of a mish-mash of individuals who may have lived anywhere over a large area, but who were not written about until many years afterwards.

Reading historian Dr Richard Carrier's book on methodology Proving History is an eye-opening work on how bible scholars make abundant use of fallacious reasoning to make 'historical persons' from characters appearing in the bible.

"The quest for the historical Jesus has failed spectacularly. Several times. Historians now even count the number of times. With the latest quest (numbered "the third") and its introduction of criteria, the concept of Jesus we're supposed to believe existed is actually getting more confused and uncertain the more scholars study it, rather than the other way arund. Progress is supposed to increase knowledge and consensus and sharpen the picture of what happened (or what we don't know), not the reverse.

...

When everyone picks up the same method, applies it to the same facts, and gets a different result, we can be certain that the method is invalid and should be abandoned."

http://www.amazon.com/Proving-History-Bayess-Theorem-Historical/dp/1616145595

This should be required reading, and perhaps one day will be for anyone entering the field.

 

[eight bits]

proudfootz

When everyone picks up the same method, applies it to the same facts, and gets a different result, we can be certain that the method is invalid and should be abandoned."

Carrier said that? Well, he is new to Bayes. As he gets more into that community, it will be pointed out to him that Bayes teaches that the "when" clause is typical of inference on slender evidence. Bayes won't fix that. Robust agreement on thin evidence requires luck or magic, not math.

While I am a frequent critic here of the (alleged) methodological foundation of the historians' consensus on HJ, the criticism acknowledges that those heuristics are admissible (and would be Bayes-admissible, even), but that they implement choices that can be questionned. Even then, the choices may be fine for professional historians ("Better that a thousand phoney people be accepted as real, than that one real person be considered phoney?"), but not necessarily of any interest or usefulness at all to people who just want to assess the prospects for whether a single person existed when and where it is claimed.


steve s

It doesn't even make sense for Mormonism to be in existence to the extent it is without the golden tablets because the golden tablets are central to the religion.

It's an even bigger miracle that the men saw the plates, and that Jsoeph Smith obtained from the plates such sublime wisdom and so much better knowledge of ancient Native American cultures than any anthropologist, archeologist or geneticist has yet contributed - all that, and now we learn that there were no grossly physical Gold Plates, but rather transcendent plates of numinous spiritual gold, with the words of the ancients spiritually inscribed upon them.

The above paragraph is a preview of coming attractions, of what will be revealed to the LDS hierarchy should it ever be proven that there were no plates. That will have to wait until there is a tenable gold plate hypothesis to disprove, so this may take a while. The same people who buy the current baloney will buy that, too. LDS will be stronger for it.

Christianity and Islam will say parallel things if it is ever "proven" that there was no HJ. This may take longer than the gold plates, since unlike the gold plates, there actually is some lively possibility that an HJ really existed.

Happy Easter.

Craig B

Sounds like we're in some accord on Paul's thinking, then.

 

[Craig B]

I agree the existence of Caesar, or Alexander, or Noah, or whomever is a separate question. dejudge makes the same point. We're all in agreement there!

Yes we all agree that proving the existence of Robin Hood or William Tell are separate exercises from proving the existence of Jesus. I really do agree with that. If ever archaeologists find in Switzerland a mummified apple transfixed by a crossbow bolt I will not immediately proclaim "The Lord liveth!".

That's a promise.

 

[maximara]

There's an important difference between those and the topic of this thread, however. Sure, no Jesus wouldn't really change anything, at least not for me. I don't even like his teachings, let alone the stupid religion that alledgedly sprang from them. But we're still left with a question: how did Christianity start, or more to the point, what's the best explanation for its beginnings ?

Those best explanation for its beginnings can be boiled down to Great Man theory (ie HJ) or Great Moment theory (MJ).

John Robinson back in 1900 as part of his MJ theory suggested what amounts to a Great moment:

1) The Jesus of the Talmud

2) An historical Jesus that may have "preached a political doctrine subversive of the Roman rule, and . . . thereby met his death " after the writings of Paul. (I go with teachings here as it gives you nearly 20 more years to play with)

3) a Galilean faith-healer with a local reputation may have been slain as a human sacrifice at some time of social tumult who was woven into the Gospel story.

I have presented several John Frum like origin for Christianity based on these two key points we know:

1) There was a desire for a messiah in Galilee from 6 BCE all the way to 70 CE with people quickly following such claiments...generally to their destruction. (documented by Josephus)

2) Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:3-4 warns of minds being "corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" by "another Jesus, whom we have not preached," "another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted" suggesting as with John Frum there were people taking up the name "Jesus" and preaching their own "gospel".

From that it is easy to see a messiah cult being swayed by Paul's vision followed by several "Jesuses" preaching their own take on Paul's teachings (there were three John Frums in a period of 7 years as well as some son of John Frum during that time). Some people put Paul's conversion in 31 CE so by 38 CE ala John Frum you could have easily had three "Jesuses" trying to do their own thing with one or more of them being killed as a result.

When the first gospel is written down using these other Jesuses efforts as material it is time shifted to fit Paul's vision. This gospel becomes so popular that it becomes the go to for all other variants of the life story but fragments of the other Jesuses get woven into these variants.

 

[IanS]

Ian


Nevertheless, my answer to the other poster's questions stands as I worte it, not as you think it should have been written. If you have some question about what I wrote, then send me a PM.

Your post remains as you wrote it because nobody here requires you to remove it.

What I am pointing out to others here is that it’s completely misleading for you to write as you did saying -

… it is a fact (if Paul's own theory is granted) that the James Gang have that commission themselves plus they had been Jesus' students beforehand. Their handshake, then, is worth something to Paul, as is their agreement not to fish in his pond.

When people here read a statement like that they are very likely indeed to get the impression that Paul’s letters make clear that he knew or believed that James and others had actually met a living Jesus.

But that it’s completely untrue. Paul’s letters do not say any such thing at all.

If you think Paul’s letters suggest to you that he believed James or anyone had met Jesus then that is an inference drawn by you. But it’s is not a “fact” that is was Paul’s theory. It’s your theory!

The bottom line on all of this is that Paul’s letters do not say that anyone had ever met a living Jesus. And nor afaik do his letters say that he even believed that anyone had met a living Jesus.

That is a crucial and very telling fact about the entirety of the biblical writing - none of it’s writers were ever able to say that they had met Jesus, or that they had met & quoted anyone else who ever knew Jesus.

As you very well know, although you do not want to accept it - Paul’s letters are very explicit on insisting on the precise opposite of him ever being told about Jesus by any other living person. His letters specifically say, and in fact insist very directly that his belief in Jesus “came from no man”, and that it was “not of human origin”, but that what he preached as his gospel of Jesus was “he died and was raised on the third day”… "according to scripture” … and this he knew not because any living person had ever told him about it and “nor was he taught it”, but instead “by revelation of the Lord”.

That is where Paul says he got his belief from. And that is as clear and insistent as any writing anywhere in the entire NT. And that specifically and unarguably does say that Paul did not learn about Jesus from anyone else.

You and CraigB may think that Paul must have learned about Jesus because earlier people such as James had met Jesus and told Paul about it, but that is the opposite of what Paul says. And neither James or anyone else ever claimed to have met Jesus or told Paul any such thing either.



Anyway - as I say, none of this is personal in any way at all. But this is an absolutely central issue in the entire HJ saga. I.e. The fact that whilst the biblical writing is full of obviously delusional untrue beliefs, none of it’s writers actually went as far as claiming that they or anyone else had ever met Jesus.

The gospel stories of Jesus are, for example, always told of him in the past, as a legendary messiah belief. He was figure who they all believed (inc. Paul) had done things in the unspecified past. But where none of them had ever met him. They knew about the messiah as a matter of earlier legend. Except in Paul’s case, where he knew that the legendary messiah was someone named “Jesus” (Yehoshua) because he learned that from divine “revelation of the Lord” and “according to scripture”.

If you think that certain passages in Paul’s letters imply that James and/or others had told Paul that they had known an earthly Jesus (as his “students before hand”, or in any other way), the please do quote those passage here from Paul’s letters, so that we can all see how clear or unclear any such inference actually is.

 

[Craig B]

... From that it is easy to see a messiah cult being swayed by Paul's vision followed by several "Jesuses" preaching their own take on Paul's teachings (there were three John Frums in a period of 7 years as well as some son of John Frum during that time). Some people put Paul's conversion in 31 CE so by 38 CE ala John Frum you could have easily had three "Jesuses" trying to do their own thing with one or more of them being killed as a result.

When the first gospel is written down using these other Jesuses efforts as material it is time shifted to fit Paul's vision. This gospel becomes so popular that it becomes the go to for all other variants of the life story but fragments of the other Jesuses get woven into these variants.

I have argued that

Paul has little in the way of knowledge of, or admitted interest in, the human biography of Jesus; so this (whether true or false) must have come from another source

Your explanation seems to be that lots of people did Jesus things in response to Paul's invention of an imaginary Jesus, and the gospels picked that up. May I entreat you to reflect on the absurdity of such an idea? The problem that MJ theorists have is that the Gospels are not evidence. Well if they're not evidence for any Jesus they are equally not evidence for any Jesus figures created in the manner you propose.

Your theory resolves none of the problems adduced by either the HJ or the MJ sides, and merely introduces further arbitrary ideas found neither inside nor outside the NT canon. The HJ at least has interpretations of the NT on its side, like them or not. Your proposal has nothing at all.

 

[Belz...]

Yet you continue to post things alleging you know what other people's motivations are.

I'm speculating, as you all are.

So, if 'anti-MJ bias' is a possible and very believable reason for the continued vitriol seen on this topic, we can agree this is as on-topic as your 'conclusions'?

...what ?

You offer your 'anecdotal evidence', so it's only fair everyone should be free to offer theirs.

Indeed. Did I say otherwise ?

Is that a fact? I have some ulterior motive?

You're making everything personal. I can only conclude that it's a personal issue for you.

I sometimes think it's good for posters to see how they appear to others.

Granted.

I have advanced plenty of arguments.

Summary, please. I can't see them through the snark.

But apparently some are so fascinated by the alleged axe I have to grind, they are obsessed with attacking me instead.

I'm responding to your posts, not following you around. I don't think you know what obsession looks like.

 

[eight bits]

Ian

Nevertheless, my answer to the other poster's questions stands as I wrote it, not as you think it should have been written. If you have some question about what I wrote, then send me a PM.


max

Paul writes that the bad preaching was being done by "those eminent(ly) apostles," not by another Jesus. Paul's concern is that someone would follow these other apostles instead of himself. He expresses no concern about competition from another Jesus visiting the church.

What observations in the New Hebrides do you propose are parallel with this? As I recall, we had some difficulty not so long ago identifying John Frum's Saint Paul. Are we now being asked to find even more eminent Frum-preachers? Are you telling us that when we do, they will have pretended to be John Frum, when Paul has said nothing about anybody pretending to be Jesus?

If so, do they claim that there are different John Frums, or does each claim to be the one and only John Frum? If the latter, then isn't there a difficulty in making the parallel lie, since Paul's Jesus is in heaven, and if he did come back, then you'd be airborne along with your dead relatives? If the former, then isn't it clear that Paul's Jesus is the one that interests us?

 

[Belz...]

That is an interesting question.

My own hypothesis is that whether or not there was an historical Jesus the cultural trends were already in motion at the time this man was supposed to have lived.

Yes, that seems to follow from what we know of that period, in that area.

This is a claim that cuts both ways: if there was a widely held expectation of a messiah, and any person could more or less fill that role.

Yes, but in your opinion was there someone who did ?

 

[Belz...]

Those best explanation for its beginnings can be boiled down to Great Man theory (ie HJ) or Great Moment theory (MJ).

So in other words, all possibilities at once. It doesn't answer my question.

 

[DOC]

So the 12 apostles who lived with Jesus for 3 years are going to believe he was raised from the dead (in Jerusalem where they currently lived) without ever seeing him. And even though they haven't seen him they are going to travel all over the territory and to Rome and risk their lives to preach.

It doesn't even make sense for Christianity to be in existence to the extent it is without a Resurrection because the Resurrection is the whole central tenet of the religion.

IIRC, at the beginning of the book of Mormon there's a list of people who swear they saw the golden tablets. It doesn't even make sense for Mormonism to be in existence to the extent it is without the golden tablets because the golden tablets are central to the religion.

Steve S

There's a difference between seeing a live Jesus who was crucified and seeing some gold colored metal plates.

And 3 people in Mormonism supposedly saw an angel give them the plates. Here is what Wiki says of those 3 people:

"...All three witnesses eventually broke with Smith and were excommunicated from the church.[1] In 1838, Joseph Smith called Cowdery, Harris, and Whitmer "too mean to mention; and we had liked to have forgotten them..."

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

 

[Brainache]

There's a difference between seeing a live Jesus who was crucified and seeing some gold colored metal plates.

And 3 people in Mormonism supposedly saw an angel give them the plates. Here is what Wiki says of those 3 people:

"...All three witnesses eventually broke with Smith and were excommunicated from the church.[1] In 1838, Joseph Smith called Cowdery, Harris, and Whitmer "too mean to mention; and we had liked to have forgotten them..."

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

There isn't much difference between telling a story about seeing a resurrected Jesus, and telling a story about seeing gold plates though, is there?

They are just stories told to make the teller seem more important.

 

[maximara]

I have argued that Your explanation seems to be that lots of people did Jesus things in response to Paul's invention of an imaginary Jesus, and the gospels picked that up. May I entreat you to reflect on the absurdity of such an idea?

Considering exactly that sort of thing happened appears to have happened with John Frum just how is absurd?

The problem that MJ theorists have is that the Gospels are not evidence.

No the Gospels are not evidence for the event they describe ie "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology, possessing no more substantial claims to historical fact than the old Greek or Norse stories of gods and heroes..." Please note this 1982 and 1995 International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J definition says NOTHING about the CHrist myth theory saying Jesus didn't exist as flesh and blood human being.

It also echoes Earl Doherty in Jesus: Neither God Nor Man. Age of Reason, 2009, pp. vii-viii with CMT being "the theory that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed, that Christianity began with a belief in a spiritual, mythical figure, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no single identifiable person lay at the root of the Galilean preaching tradition." which Bart Ehrman in Did Jesus Exist? Harper Collins, 2012, p. 12, states "In simpler terms, the historical Jesus did not exist . Or if he did, he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity."

This is NO DIFFERENT from John Robertson's 1900 definition reiterated 1946 "What the myth theory denies is that Christianity can be traced to a personal founder who taught as reported in the Gospels and was put to death in the circumstances there recorded." nor is it any different from the definitions given in Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. p. 122. ISBN 1-4303-1230-0.
Christopher Hitchens' 2007 God is Not Great, Chapter 8 or Thomas L. Thompson's 2005 The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David.

Face it, the CMT is NOT simply Jesus didn't exist but more accurately 'the Gospel accounts describe a Jesus with no more historical validity then the accounts of Robin Hood or King Arthur do'.

 

[IanS]

Ian

Nevertheless, my answer to the other poster's questions stands as I wrote it, not as you think it should have been written. If you have some question about what I wrote, then send me a PM.

Just quote where Paul's letters say he had the theory that James and others had been students of a living Jesus.

Where is the quote?

 

[IanS]

I have argued that
Quote:
Paul has little in the way of knowledge of, or admitted interest in, the human biography of Jesus; so this (whether true or false) must have come from another source .

Paul’s letters tell you very clearly and directly where he obtained his Jesus belief. And he is absolutely insistent about it.

On what basis are you totally rejecting Paul’s own very clear explanation of how he came to know that someone called “Yehoshau” was the messiah described in OT scripture?

On what basis do you reject what Paul actually says, and instead substitute a belief of your own which is completely contrary to what Paul says about his own beliefs?

How is it that you know more about Paul’s beliefs than he did himself?

 

[jhunter1163]

Folks, do let's try to stay on the topic, which is Bart Ehrman and the historical Jesus, not generalized religious ramblings, and decidedly not each other. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: jhunter1163

 

[dejudge]

Face it, the CMT is NOT simply Jesus didn't exist but more accurately 'the Gospel accounts describe a Jesus with no more historical validity then the accounts of Robin Hood or King Arthur do'.

The stories of Jesus are far more mythological than those of Robin Hood and King Arthur.

The Canonised stories of Jesus are essentially not plausible from conception to ascension whereas those of Robin Hood and King Arthur may be plausible.

Without any external historical corroboration, the stories of Jesus can be immediately discarded as non-historical.

Jesus of the NT is easily considered a myth character like Satan the Devil and the Angel Gabriel until new evidence surfaces.

 

[eight bits]

max

Face it, the CMT is NOT simply Jesus didn't exist but more accurately 'the Gospel accounts describe a Jesus with no more historical validity then the accounts of Robin Hood or King Arthur do'.

The supposedly "more accurate" version doesn't say anything about Jesus at all. It compares one collection of literary works to two other collections of literary works. When it suits you, you add to the known invalids some literary works about Davy Crockett and George Washington. I'm fond of a novel about Abraham Lincoln that portrays him as a vampire hunter.

I assume that we can agree that Robin Hood and King Arthur stories don't refer to anybody in particular known to have liived, and that works featuring Davy Crockett, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are referring to particular people who really lived. Thus, we see that appearing in stories with "no historical validity" is uniformative about the character's status as a real person or whether the person had influence on real events - for example, inspiring a multigenerational tradition of writing fabulous stories about them.

More and more, I come to suspect that your quarrel is with the proponents of Gospel Jesuses (not many of whom hang around here, as it happens), and that your personally favored brand of MJ isn't much opposed to, but mostly irrelevant to the prospects that Christianity's earliest works refer to an actual person, but say little about his real life plainly or with careful attention to particular facts - which is more or less what Ehrman professes as his view. That's HJ enough for most of us here, I think.

 

[IanS]

More and more, I come to suspect that your quarrel is with the proponents of Gospel Jesuses (not many of whom hang around here, as it happens), and that your personally favored brand of MJ isn't much opposed to, but mostly irrelevant to the prospects that Christianity's earliest works refer to an actual person, but say little about his real life plainly or with careful attention to particular facts - which is more or less what Ehrman professes as his view. That's HJ enough for most of us here, I think.

Ehrman and other bible scholars say they have identified Jesus as a specific individual who definitely lived. He was specifically the person who had James and others as his actual brothers. And that person, Jesus, was brought in front of Pontius Pilate, and thereafter publicly executed in front of countless witnesses.

That may be a minimal HJ position. But that is not afaik any MJ position.

The MJ position is that bible scholars and others are on very shaky ground indeed when they claim there is sufficient reliable written evidence in the NT and elsewhere to support their “certainty” (or any other level of positive confidence) that Jesus was known to have family brothers and that he was known to have been crucified under Pilate etc.

Afaik the most minimal MJ position is that Jesus is not identifiable as any such individual. At least, not on the basis of any reliable or credible evidence in the written historical accounts.

Isn’t that the difference?

 

[dejudge]

More and more, I come to suspect that your quarrel is with the proponents of Gospel Jesuses (not many of whom hang around here, as it happens), and that your personally favored brand of MJ isn't much opposed to, but mostly irrelevant to the prospects that Christianity's earliest works refer to an actual person, but say little about his real life plainly or with careful attention to particular facts - which is more or less what Ehrman professes as his view. That's HJ enough for most of us here, I think.

Actually, Ehrman went outside the boundaries of historical research and claimed Jesus CERTAINLY existed when he discredited his sources and presented NO actual contemporary evidence--No archaeological findings, No artifacts and No pre 70 CE manuscripts.

In "Did Jesus Exist?" page 187 Ehrman declares that Certainty is outside historical research and we can only establish probability.

The very same Ehrman in page 4 of his introduction claimed he wrote "Did Jesus Exist?" to demonstrate that Jesus CERTAINLY existed

Essentially, Ehrman knew his statement was a fallacy.

Ehrman knew that he could NOT demonstrate that Jesus CERTAINLY existed.