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Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

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Craig B said:
Since you have now thought of it, and have said it, then complain about it to the relevant people.
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It was tsig's joke, I can take no credit for it (a neat little "pun" showing what can happen when you misquote people).

What about Jesus though - did you find any evidence outside the bible yet?
 
IanS said:
It was tsig's joke, I can take no credit for it (a neat little "pun" showing what can happen when you misquote people).

What about Jesus though - did you find any evidence outside the bible yet?
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Put up or be quiet, please.
 
OK, IanS.

I don't think the two of us will arrive at an agreement for evaluation of the case.
You seem to approach the matter from how much it matters to Christian culture today, whereas I see no reason to concern over how much it matters to Christianity today in regards to factors regarding the historicity of any given figure in there.

I don't care what any religion holds when looking at what we have historically or not.
In this case, at best Jesus was a benign individual; there is also the possibility that such a figure never existed as a singular entity and the arriving legends were a composite of stories which were attributed to a common name of the region through the diaspora, and then of course there is the possibility that it was invented entirely and there were no inspirations for the legends at all.

I see no reason to raise or lower the level of critique for this individual's existence any more than any other figure, and I cannot provide any better critique for this individual than any other like individual of the time and era.

As with most figures of this period, we are left with very little information and only the ability to accept some construct of the figure as having existed, or reject it for some defined reason.

Personally, outside of the current social religious contests taking place in our culture (which I do not concern over), I see no reason to give much interest in this figure's existence or non-existence as their status on that matters to the historical record very little.
We don't have to rewrite very much history if they did not exist, and nothing remarkable happens if they did - for if they did, they certainly were not a divine individual of some deity.

As such, I feel none of what you feel in regards to social pressure to evaluate this individual more finely, and demand from the case a higher echelon, than any other individual of the same period.


I don't see any such individual's existence as paramount.
The only part that matters is whether or not they are as theologically attributed, and this is clearly not the case.

What these texts, and all the others outside of the canonized texts, inform us of is not really much regarding any specific individual - as even if any of those individuals are accurate, they are grossly misrepresented for the motives of the message any given author wishes to have valued through them, but instead, they inform us of the values of two groups:
  1. a minority diaspora era Hebrews who reflectively saw sympathy in the Galilean philosophies of coexistence and tolerance within their own culture ("separate but equal") for survival as opposed to militant opposition for distinct governmental separatism (which the attempt of repeatedly damaged their people more than aided)
  2. various Roman territory cultures who took up any form of these legends and converted them into their understanding and values.
  3. later evolving sociopolitical landscape of what would become Orthodox and non-Orthodox followings of these legends and the manners in which the legends were understood and valued.
 
IanS said:
Do not misrepresent peoples quotes by joining together pieces from completely different paragraphs. If you want to quote pieces from two different paragraphs, just quote the two parts completely separately from one-another, then there is no confusion and no risk of misleading people about what the quoted person actually wrote.

And for the 20th time - your belief that my reason for saying I distrust the evidence of Jesus offered by bible scholars, is that I am “hostile” to Christian religion, is 100%, flat-out, totally WRONG.

The only reason I am distrustful of what they offer as their evidence, is because it’s fatally flawed and far to weak. Nothing else.
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And yet you repeatedly state that proving Jesus didn't exist would be "Harmful for the Christian Faith"as if it is your goal to harm Christianity.

Whereas a Historian would prefer to reach a conclusion of what is the most plausible explanation for Christianity, you want the conclusion that is most harmful to Christianity.

Why is it important for you to harm Christianity?

Why do you think that "no Jesus" is any more harmful than "failed Rebel Jesus"?

A failed rebel Jesus isn't Divine or supernatural, he is just a Charismatic Cult Leader who got nailed by the Romans. He's not the Messiah, he's just a naughty boy...
 
Eight Bits said:
So, if there is widespread agreement (either acknowledged or revealed in people's "odds") that the evidence is thin, then we might expect that an educated independent-minded population would include many academics who profess that it is more likely than not that Jesus didn't exist as "Patient Zero" of the Christian-Islamic pandemic, which affects about half the world's population. We don't see that. That is an authentic phenomenon, and needs explanation.
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This assumes that the standard of the field has some absolute echelon of measure for all history.
Instead, what you have are relative measures being used.

Meaning, if we are looking at something from the 1960's and something has this little material, then it is not going to be valued as much.

However, if we are looking at something from the Middle East (anywhere in the Middle East, doesn't really matter) from around 1st c CE (actually, from 1st c CE and earlier), and we have this amount of material on the matter, then the matter is actually taken in with much more grant to its possibility.

As I've mentioned several times before, the historical record is not a hard science. It fails incredibly by those standards and always will by consequence of the materials we have available.

The field attempts to patch together some history as best as it can accomplish with what it has available, and I can easily admit that most of that record is extremely thin and that numerous entries would fail to stand against scrutiny of direct evidence of the subject in question.

Does this mean Jesus existed? No.
Does it mean that he didn't? No.

What does it mean? It means that you have to make your own judgement on that if you don't want to go with the consensus of the field, which is always in flux but at the moment holds that some individual of this form existed.

I don't actually agree with the consensus on that matter.
I tend to lean more towards the composite hypothesis, but admittedly, I don't really personally care as - for my interests - it matters far more who the High Priests were and when than it matters whether Jesus did or did not actually exist.

To me, Jesus is a legend, like Arthur, and one that indicates some concept and ideas that were going around during an age of turmoil and uncertainty; especially in sociopolitical relations between Galilee and Judah.

I don't for one moment accept these texts as historical, however; there is far too much idiomatic symbolism involved in the names of people and places, as well as actions taken, for these texts to be approached from the idea that they are some remnant of specific historical events.


Edit: By the way, this is why I really have a sore attitude and negative bias regarding Theologians working in the historical field beyond the capacity of being a cultural translation assistant. Meaning, Western theologians, in my opinion, should not be used in any more capacity than anyone uses Buddhist monks when working on a piece of history. Theologians should certainly not be considered unbiased or creditable in regards to history.
It is a personal frustration of mine that such a field is tolerated and treated as if equal to secular training and degree attainment in the appropriate field of study.
 
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JaysonR said:
To me, Jesus is a legend, like Arthur, and one that indicates some concept and ideas that were going around during an age of turmoil and uncertainty; especially in sociopolitical relations between Galilee and Judah.
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So, you have finally contradicted yourself. You do care about whether or not Jesus did exist.

And what is even more bizarre is that you have already admitted that there is very little history for the alleged time period so you must have speculated that Jesus is a legend.

Do you think people should care whether or not Your Jesus was a legend?

I care about what is written about Jesus of Nazareth because there are Billions of people who BELIEVE he did exist as a God or a man.

Jesus was described as the Son of a Ghost and God Creator in the Bible whether or not you care.

Your Jesus is NOT documented.
 
dejudge said:
So, you have finally contradicted yourself. You do care about whether or not Jesus did exist.

And what is even more bizarre is that you have already admitted that there is very little history for the alleged time period so you must have speculated that Jesus is a legend.

Do you think people should care whether or not Your Jesus was a legend?

I care about what is written about Jesus of Nazareth because there are Billions of people who BELIEVE he did exist as a God or a man.

Jesus was described as the Son of a Ghost and God Creator in the Bible whether or not you care.

Your Jesus is NOT documented.
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Do you actually think that having "Documentation" in the modern sense that you are using it is possible for an early 1st century Jewish Rabbi?

Is it so implausible to you that such a person might have existed without a birth certificate and a court record of his trial surviving (if such things even existed in that time and place)?

Why this obsessive need for "Official Documents", as if we can't conclude anything about the ancient world unless we have it explicitly stated by some "Apologist Authority"?
 
proudfootz said:
It's troubling that anyone in a position of responsibility would trivialize the Holocaust in this way. It speaks of moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

They should be, but apparently bible scholars have devised their own 'criteria' to try to spin straw into gold.

It seems some bible scholars are hoping some of the reality of actual figures of history will rub off onto their bible characters. Sorry, Charlie, it doesn't work that way.
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It is like the "over 5000 Greek manuscripts" claim--a misrepresentation of the facts...something that appears again and again in the literature even as far back as 180 CE.

If one compares Jesus to Julius Caesar then you would expect the amount and quality of the evidence to be roughly equal...but it isn't.

Similarly if one says Jesus was originally on par with the many would be messiahs Josephus mentions like Simon of Peraea or John of Giscala then one also has to accept the likelihood the Gospel account is fictional propaganda and is therefore useless in determining what the "real" Jesus was like, what he preached, or even how he died.

We have at least three time frames for the death of Jesus: 29-36 CE from the Gospels, 42-44 CE from Irenaeus' c180 CE Demonstration (74), and 103-76 BCE from "Epiphanius, the Talmud, and the Toledoth Jeschu (dependent on second-century Jewish-Christian gospel)"

The only legendary Western people I can think of that have this pick a decade or century for their "historical" origin is King Arthur and Robin Hood both of whom seem more a composite characters rather then the exaggerated exploits of single people.

The one question the HJ supporters avoid like the plague is if Jesus was a well known historical person as is claimed by the Gospels when why did Eusebius in his The History of the Church claim "It is also recorded that under Claudius, Philo came to Rome to have conversations with Peter, then preaching to the people there ... It is plain enough that he not only knew but welcomed with whole-hearted approval the apostolic men of his day, who it seems were of Hebrew stock and therefore, in the Jewish manner, still retained most of their ancient customs." when in reality Philo wrote not one word on either Jesus or Chrestianity?

Why go for such an obvious fiction if the evidence for Jesus was so good?
 
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Dejudge,

I don't care if Jesus existed.
I don't think the material is much more than thin at best for a specific existence as detailed, even without all the mythical credits.
I don't think a special way of evaluating Jesus is required.
I don't think that the non-Mythical singular Jesus is as likely as a composite of many such individuals from the era and location using a common name, or even the possibility that some individual on a contentious Passover festival who was not well known was killed and from which seeded the platform for legends to grow that had very little to do with that given individual and much more to do with sociopolitical points being made.

I can at once not value the matter and still hold an opinion regarding it.
 
maximara said:
Similarly if one says Jesus was originally on par with the many would be messiahs Josephus mentions like Simon of Peraea or John of Giscala then one also has to accept the likelihood the Gospel account is fictional propaganda and is therefore useless in determining what the "real" Jesus was like, what he preached, or even how he died.
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That is the best that is approachable.

Any "real" Jesus is a simulation patched together from what we know of the culture of the time and (usually) builds the simulation from stripping out anything the given builder of the simulation thinks is unlikely to have occurred or be a property of the figure.

This is where a very large amount of pedantic debates take place in the field; what Jesus actually did and said.

Personally, I think all of those such discussions are pointless and about on par with debating over Pen and Paper role playing game rules.


For instance, we don't try to imagine the personality and philosophies of Menelaus the High Priest. We know that by most standards of today, the account of this individual consequently means this individual was a genocidal tyrant of some form just based on the shear number of people murdered credited to his control, and the reasons given for his killing of these peoples.

But we have absolutely no real idea what this person may have been like as a person.
For all we know, they were the most joyful individual to be around and at the same time a genocidal murderer.

It's fun to make Jesus simulations, or any figure of history of like fashion, but it is also just a simulation.
It's not "them".


By the way, this isn't unique to Jesus either.
I have sat through several such explanations over the Kings of Hattusa, and each is just as terrible as Jesus profiles.

Something compels people to try to recreate the personalities of historical figures (heck, it even happens in "Cosmos" on TV and most of those are just laughable).
 
JaysonR said:
That is the best that is approachable.

Any "real" Jesus is a simulation patched together from what we know of the culture of the time and (usually) builds the simulation from stripping out anything the given builder of the simulation thinks is unlikely to have occurred or be a property of the figure.

This is where a very large amount of pedantic debates take place in the field; what Jesus actually did and said.

Personally, I think all of those such discussions are pointless and about on par with debating over Pen and Paper role playing game rules.
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The biggest problem is so much of the Jesus story (even stripped of the supernatural stuff) just doesn't fit what we know of the time or logic:

* Herod's Slaughter of the Innocents (Matthew 2:16-18) is not recorded in any other history (or Gospel) — not even by Josephus, who really didn't like Herod and meticulously catalogued his other misdeeds.

* Luke 2:1-4 claims Jesus was born in the year of a universal tax census, but the first such census did not occur until 74 CE - and it is not in the other gospels.

* The Sanhedrin trial account is totally at odds with the records on how that court actually operated in the 1st century.

* Jesus preaches in the open, so there is no need for the whole Judas betrayal. A real Roman official would have sent a modest group of soldiers and got the guy, which is what happened with John the Baptist.

* Pontius Pilate is totally out of character based on other accounts. Josephus relates two accounts where Pilate's solution to mobs causing a disturbance was brutally simple--have Roman soldiers go out and kill them until they dispersed. Moreover it is never really explained in the Bible why, if Jesus' only crime was blasphemy, Pilate would need to be involved. If Jesus' crime has been sedition, then there would be no reason for Pilate to involve Herod Antipas--or for the Sanhedrin to be involved for that matter.

* The crucified were left to rot as a warning to others unless there was intervention on the behalf of an important person per The Life of Flavius Josephus (75)

* Given Jesus' short time on the cross and reports of him being out and about afterwards, certainly the Romans might have wondered if they had been tricked, yet there is nothing in the reports about the Romans acting in this matter. Carrier describes how the Romans would have handled the situation and it is totally at odds with the account in Acts.

Even if one strips out the supernatural and possible exaggerations one is still left with loads of historical nonsense. And if those sections of the Gospels are fiction then one must wonder if any part of of it is true.

Compare that to the Robin Hood account which holds together when compared with what is known of the time enough though more time has passed between the first known account and the supposed events.
 
Quite right, and that's why the stories are of more value in reflecting the culture of those venerating, keeping, or modifying the story.

Each of those items is of interest as to why someone would write that in, just as it is the same regarding why the Magi are mentioned as an authoritative group, or why anyone would go out of their way to make the hero of the story from Bethlehem.

What the texts enter into the story, how they present subject matter, and what they do not enter into the story is, in my opinion, a far greater treat and fascination than the matter of whether or not Jesus really existed.
 
maximara said:
It is like the "over 5000 Greek manuscripts" claim--a misrepresentation of the facts...something that appears again and again in the literature even as far back as 180 CE.

If one compares Jesus to Julius Caesar then you would expect the amount and quality of the evidence to be roughly equal...but it isn't.

Similarly if one says Jesus was originally on par with the many would be messiahs Josephus mentions like Simon of Peraea or John of Giscala then one also has to accept the likelihood the Gospel account is fictional propaganda and is therefore useless in determining what the "real" Jesus was like, what he preached, or even how he died.

We have at least three time frames for the death of Jesus: 29-36 CE from the Gospels, 42-44 CE from Irenaeus' c180 CE Demonstration (74), and 103-76 BCE from "Epiphanius, the Talmud, and the Toledoth Jeschu (dependent on second-century Jewish-Christian gospel)"

The only legendary Western people I can think of that have this pick a decade or century for their "historical" origin is King Arthur and Robin Hood both of whom seem more a composite characters rather then the exaggerated exploits of single people.

The one question the HJ supporters avoid like the plague is if Jesus was a well known historical person as is claimed by the Gospels when why did Eusebius in his The History of the Church claim "It is also recorded that under Claudius, Philo came to Rome to have conversations with Peter, then preaching to the people there ... It is plain enough that he not only knew but welcomed with whole-hearted approval the apostolic men of his day, who it seems were of Hebrew stock and therefore, in the Jewish manner, still retained most of their ancient customs." when in reality Philo wrote not one word on either Jesus or Chrestianity?

Why go for such an obvious fiction if the evidence for Jesus was so good?
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I think this last explains the interference with Josephus - some felt he should have mentioned Jesus, and that was easily amended.
 
JaysonR said:
Quite right, and that's why the stories are of more value in reflecting the culture of those venerating, keeping, or modifying the story.

Each of those items is of interest as to why someone would write that in, just as it is the same regarding why the Magi are mentioned as an authoritative group, or why anyone would go out of their way to make the hero of the story from Bethlehem.

What the texts enter into the story, how they present subject matter, and what they do not enter into the story is, in my opinion, a far greater treat and fascination than the matter of whether or not Jesus really existed.
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Obviously the only thing we can study is the literature, and that is the thing that's had the most influence at all times in history.

It does seem to have become a sort of parlor game to try and imagine what Jesus was 'really like'.
 
Yes, if someone lets go of the parlor game regarding Jesus, there is a much more culturally rich exploration available if they so choose to take some time and begin to read and study.

It's probably not nearly as provocative to the Television public, but it is quite an explosive period in human social evolution (that is; 15th c BCE through to 2nd c CE, Middle East, Egypt, and Mediterranean).
 
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JaysonR said:
Dejudge,

I don't care if Jesus existed.
I don't think the material is much more than thin at best for a specific existence as detailed, even without all the mythical credits.
I don't think a special way of evaluating Jesus is required.
I don't think that the non-Mythical singular Jesus is as likely as a composite of many such individuals from the era and location using a common name, or even the possibility that some individual on a contentious Passover festival who was not well known was killed and from which seeded the platform for legends to grow that had very little to do with that given individual and much more to do with sociopolitical points being made.

I can at once not value the matter and still hold an opinion regarding it.
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Again you continue to contradict yourself. You hold an opinion regarding Jesus. Your Jesus is a legend like Arthur.

It is expected that you should have evaluated the matter unless your opinion is baseless.

JaysonR said:
To me, Jesus is a legend, like Arthur, and one that indicates some concept and ideas that were going around during an age of turmoil and uncertainty; especially in sociopolitical relations between Galilee and Judah.
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Perhaps, those who argue for an HJ also hold an opinion but have never evaluated the matter.

Maybe even so-called experts hold opinions about Jesus WITHOUT any evaluation or evidence.

You did say the evidence is thin? Did you not?
 
Dejudge,

Whatever it is that you need me to be for your mind, so be it.
I have conveyed my position and I find no difficulty in not caring if Pink Unicorns exist on Mars and at the same time thinking it unlikely.
 
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