Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[JaysonR]

OK, Eight bits,

I readdressed the Catholic church by rephrasing the point as follows:
If Jesus' bones were found, would it be a solution to suggest that those bones were bones that he left behind and had swapped out for a new beautified set of bones - like one swaps out tires on a car?

The answer (paraphrasing from memory): No, that would be just as bad as no solution at all. The role of the resurrection only functions if the same body with the same parts as before conquered death and that unity was beautified.


My conversation with Fr. Paisius was a bit more open (and more pleasant; the Catholic clergy representative was not so terribly interested in the conversation and mostly considered it "overthinking").

Fr. Paisus, true to form, thought this was an exciting question and became really excited.
He, in principle, voiced the same conclusion but for (guessing) different reasons (I say guessing because the Catholic did not really go into detail and just rested on the above).

He pointed out that our bodies are made for our souls and our souls made for our bodies; that they are one together and not capable of separation in their eternal form in Heaven.
He then raised the question as to why Jesus would leave old bones behind like car parts when, unlike a car mechanic, he could heal them and take them with the rest of his body.
As an add on to this, laughingly (he's a very joyful person), he asked what the point of the resurrection of the dead would be for at all if we could just get new parts entirely and leave our bodies behind after Judgement - for that matter, why wouldn't Jesus have just left his bones in the tomb if he had left them behind?

On a more serious note, he pointed out that if Jesus could not heal his bones and defeat their carnal damage and had to create new bones, then he would not be defeating death but simply cheating it. By consequence, God would not have breathed new life into the body, but replaced the body with a new (different parts) body and in such, we would not be able to gain new life (keep in mind he previously locked the body and soul together), but would instead be getting new bodies; not new life in the same bodies that were resurrected and healed.

I asked him, Ian, also about Corinthians 15 while I had him on the subject.
He basically said that it is referring to a physical body that is not limited by this world's needs, but is instead only reliant upon spiritual food, but that it does not refer to a resurrection without a physical body.


----

Now, I did find a representative of Christians who would not be affected.
I talked to one of (there are a few here) Evangelical pastors here.
He said that the body was metaphorical, obviously, because of what we find in Paul's writings, and explained that Jesus could transition between physical and immaterial without effort.
That was a pretty novel approach.

On the other hand, that was not the only Evangelical pastor I spoke to. I also called up one of the other Churches and their pastor stated that the physical resurrection was what had happened, and that the idea of swapping parts is 'just a subtle way of denying the resurrection'.
(I hear the echo of Norman Geisler in this response)

 

[Craig B]

OK, so you are never going to give a frank admission of what 1 Corinthians 15 undoubtedly and repeatedly says.

It's impossible to make any progress at all if people can't even admit "1+1=2".

On this point, may I remind you of my #7396. If you have answered it, I apologise. I was pointing out that I could not find in 1 Corinthians 15 or anywhere else in the NT the words you attribute to Paul. I wrote

I can't find a reference to a "former earthly body" in the words of Paul you quote. So it doesn't "say that". Can you be specific about the exact phraseology you are paraphrasing as "former earthly"? Paul speaks of "one kind" and "another kind", clearly and undeniably; but "former earthly" I simply can't find in the texts you cite.

So I would be grateful if you could cite the passage and translation that contains the wording to which you refer.

 

[proudfootz]

You have not answered my question, and your failure to do so is deliberate. Are similar attacks made in the other direction permissible? If it is not in order to accuse mythicists of bias, is it in order to accuse historicists of bias? You understand my question, and it admits of an extremely simple answer, which I would be most grateful to receive.

You are working too hard to try and find some disagreement here.

So-called 'mythicists' are accused of bias by people who could just as easily be accused of bias themselves.

I abjure assertions of 'bias' as ad hominem arguments every bit as much as you do.

Bart Ehrman (remember the title of the thread?) regularly indulges in such rhetorical legerdemain.

 

[proudfootz]

Just trying to keep you honest.

No need to worry about that.

 

[proudfootz]

If for the moment we are talking of what Bart Ehrman has said, then iirc the opening sections of his book are mostly a dismissive tirade against so-called “mythicists” who he says deny what is according to him the “certainty of Jesus” agreed by “virtually every properly trained scholar on the planet”. And iirc, in the midst of that he even brought up holocaust deniers.

But more generally, as I have pointed out many times, even way back in the Piggy thread before any of the last three HJ threads began, the people you are calling “historians” are actually bible scholars almost all of whom entered that profession as a result of already being highly committed devout Christian theists believing very strongly in God and Jesus. Some of them, such as Dominic Crossan are even ex priests, and some were also at least at one time evangelising creationists. On which matter I also quoted to you from the book by Hector Avalos, who is a professor of biblical studies at Iowa State Univ., where he has highlighted that sort of religious background as a problem which is recognised within the profession itself; i.e. a historic lack of neutrality which has always been widespread, if not almost universal, amongst practitioners in that subject.

Against that, on the sceptic side, there are far fewer sceptics who have written extensively on the issue of why they think Jesus may not have existed. But iirc, most sceptics who have written on the historicity of Jesus, do say that they were at one time were themselves Christian believers, if only their teenage years. But for various reasons they eventually rejected that religious faith. Or else, if not actually ever Christian theists, they mostly seem to say that they did at one time believe Jesus was real. But they believed that because, as they themselves often explain, they simply took it on trust that the church was correct to say there was never any dispute about the reality of Jesus … it was only when sceptics such as Carrier, Avalos, Price began to look seriously at what the claimed evidence was, that they began to realise that there actually is no credible evidence.

More generally, as far as atheists as a whole are concerned, afaik most (like me) really don’t care whether Jesus existed or not, at least not from any point of view of atheism which is really just a fact of not believing in a supernatural God. There are other reasons why any of us might take an interest in how poor the evidence of Jesus turns out actually to be, which no doubt came as a surprise to many of us … but atheism has nothing really to do with whether Jesus was real or not, so in that sense it’s really not a matter in which many (if any) atheists that I know would even bother to think about as a matter needing a biased defence.

This is exactly why I think it is self-defeating for certain persons to launch into wild speculation about the alleged 'motives' or 'bias' of anyone involved in the debate - in the end it is only ad hominem garbage which adds nothing to our knowledge and is also self-defeating as everyone has motives.

Bart Ehrman would have better served his cause by omitting the blatant hostility and just stuck to the facts, such as they are. When he introduces the topic with his weird rant about UFOs and 'holocaust denial' he's displaying a side of his personality which has no place in an historical debate.

 

[proudfootz]

Bad pun there.

Seriously, to have been resurrected Euhemerism as an idea would have had to died at some place and there is no real evidence that it did.

Sure, some individual myths (like Pope Joan) have been abandoned but the main concept of Euhemerism remained as demonstrated by the myths of King Arthur and Robin Hood survived.

The problem with Euhemerism as a whole is we know that the idea that all myth is "history in disguise" is nonsense. Per Bulfinch 'there are myths which arose from the desire of man to account for those natural phenomena which could not understand' There are also myths that simply exist to give a reason for the names of places and persons.

Take the myth of Persephone. It is to explain why there is a winter...it is Demeter pining for her daughter Persephone, the (unwilling?) bride of Hades who must be with her husband for part of the year.

I agree. Euhemerism does not work as a rule because it seems pretty obvious some figures are personifications of ideas and the stories are 'just so' stories and not histories.

 

[maximara]

Audie Murphy merits all possible honour and respect, of course.
Kami status?

Difficult to say.
My colleagues are skittish about talking about kamis; they only blurted out they perceived a kami in my possession because they were utterly taken by surprise by the object.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programme.

Interesting. The RPG supplement GURPS Japan (which uses works such Collcutt's Cultural Atlas of Japan, Hearn's Japan: an Interpretation, Sato's Legends of the Samurai and 21 other historial references as source material so it is reasonably accurate regarding the real world Japan pre Matthew C. Perry) says the following regarding Kami:

"The kami are not precisely gods, although that is the usual translation. They are anything powerful or awe-inspiring, including mountains, Emperors, storms, ancestors, animals, ghosts, echoes, and heroes."

Under Living Kami there is this curious comment: "The Emperor is considered a kami during his reign (but not after he retires and becomes a Buddhist priest)" This reinforces the idea that the term kami is less like deus and more like numen.

 

[IanS]

Ian,

Does it matter what I, a non-Christian, think about this issue when the issue is what Christians think?

Jayson, I was not asking you for a subjective opinion. I was asking you (many times now) to simply admit what it clearly says in Paul’s letter. But for some reason you are completely unable even to admit the undeniable.

As I said above - we really cannot make any progress on any HJ issue when we have a situation where you insist to me that Christians believe that Jesus was “physically” resurrected and in support of that you quote to me 1-Corinthians 15 saying it says Jesus was “physically” resurrected, and then when I check 1-Corinthians not only does it not say “physically resurrected” but actually says the total 100% opposite of that, and it repeats and stresses that opposite description … and where when that is quoted to you verbatim and highlighted so that Paul’s actual words are unmistakable and undeniable, you repeatedly fail to agree that the words are the words!

I must say I did expect better of you.

And all of that in pursuit of a suggestion which you yourself made and which is physically impossible anyway!

We really have long since reached the point where people who believe in Jesus must either produce some reliable credible evidence of anyone ever having met this person, or else admit (or have it declared on their behalf if they cannot admit the truth) that there is no such evidence known to anyone.

 

[Brainache]

Jayson, I was not asking you for a subjective opinion. I was asking you (many times now) to simply admit what it clearly says in Paul’s letter. But for some reason you are completely unable even to admit the undeniable.

As I said above - we really cannot make any progress on any HJ issue when we have a situation where you insist to me that Christians believe that Jesus was “physically” resurrected and in support of that you quote to me 1-Corinthians 15 saying it says Jesus was “physically” resurrected, and then when I check 1-Corinthians not only does it not say “physically resurrected” but actually says the total 100% opposite of that, and it repeats and stresses that opposite description … and where when that is quoted to you verbatim and highlighted so that Paul’s actual words are unmistakable and undeniable, you repeatedly fail to agree that the words are the words!

I must say I did expect better of you.

And all of that in pursuit of a suggestion which you yourself made and which is physically impossible anyway!

We really have long since reached the point where people who believe in Jesus must either produce some reliable credible evidence of anyone ever having met this person, or else admit (or have it declared on their behalf if they cannot admit the truth) that there is no such evidence known to anyone.

Or, alternatively, you could try to learn how Historians study History.

That might answer a few of these questions you have about "credible evidence"...

 

[Craig B]

Jayson, I was not asking you for a subjective opinion. I was asking you (many times now) to simply admit what it clearly says in Paul’s letter. But for some reason you are completely unable even to admit the undeniable. (this is an ellipsis ...) and where when that is quoted to you verbatim and highlighted so that Paul’s actual words are unmistakable and undeniable, you repeatedly fail to agree that the words are the words!

I must say I did expect better of you.

I remind you again of my problem here, that I can't find the words you attribute to Paul, which you have described as undeniable, unmistakable, actual, and "clearly" so. Many times over I have asked you, and I hope you can now find time to respond. I most recently wrote.

On this point, may I remind you of my #7396. If you have answered it, I apologise. I was pointing out that I could not find in 1 Corinthians 15 or anywhere else in the NT the words you attribute to Paul. I wrote

I can't find a reference to a "former earthly body" in the words of Paul you quote. So it doesn't "say that". Can you be specific about the exact phraseology you are paraphrasing as "former earthly"? Paul speaks of "one kind" and "another kind", clearly and undeniably; but "former earthly" I simply can't find in the texts you cite. So I would be grateful if you could cite the passage and translation that contains the wording to which you refer.

Then I will most willingly "agree that the words are the words". Thank you in advance for your response.

 

[David Mo]

Well, once HJers reject the shroud of Turin as a fake they only have the known fake or falsely attributed writings riddled with fiction, discrepancies, historical problems and events that could NOT have happened.

You confuse apples with oranges in your intent of ridiculing the Christians' religious beliefs. In doing so you ridicule your own arguments . The fraud of the "Holy Shroud" was a deliberate production of a relique. The Gospels are the result of an anonymous construction of a myth. They are very different things and have very different implications. That is why the historians and historians-theologians study the Gospels and not the "Holy Sheet".

For example, you can not match the meaning of "in/authentic" in both cases. The Turin Shroud is not authentic and can not say anything about the First Century and the Jesus' life. The Gospels are not authentic History but can say a lot about the Christianity in the First Century and it is possible that some thing about the Jesus' life. I dont think so, but it is possible as methodological hypothesis.

I think that the first thing you have to do in a debate is to respect the adversary. You don't do so and you continually fall into overstatements and fallacious arguments. Some people in this forum probably think they ought to unite against the common enemy and support your tendentious arguments. I don't think so. Irony is a good dialectical weapon but it must be used with subtleness, my dear judge. And you seem more like Judge Bean and his bear.

 

[IanS]

This is exactly why I think it is self-defeating for certain persons to launch into wild speculation about the alleged 'motives' or 'bias' of anyone involved in the debate - in the end it is only ad hominem garbage which adds nothing to our knowledge and is also self-defeating as everyone has motives.

Bart Ehrman would have better served his cause by omitting the blatant hostility and just stuck to the facts, such as they are. When he introduces the topic with his weird rant about UFOs and 'holocaust denial' he's displaying a side of his personality which has no place in an historical debate.

I think that if people have a background which is a self-interested one, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with recognising that the background may be influencing their views.

That's clearly a risk where devout Christians enter a profession where they are searching for biblical writing which supports the belief which they already had in Jesus. That does seem to be the case with almost all people who enter the academic field of religious studies. And it surely will not help if we deny that?

But the test of that is whether or not they can support their arguments by credible evidence. And in the case of bible scholars who write to say Jesus "definitely" existed, it seems they cannot support that claim with any credible evidence. So you have to wonder why it is that they come to such certainty of belief on such terribly poor evidence. Shrugs ….

 

[JaysonR]

Ian,

Your last post confused me, so pardon my want of clarification.
Do you view me to be asserting that Jesus existed because the Church understands the resurrection as physical, even with Paul included?

 

[IanS]

Ian,

Your last post confused me, so pardon my want of clarification.
Do you view me to be asserting that Jesus existed because the Church understands the resurrection as physical, even with Paul included?

No. I have no idea whether you think it's likely Jesus existed. Afaik, you agree that the claimed evidence is very poor indeed.

 

[maximara]

This is exactly why I think it is self-defeating for certain persons to launch into wild speculation about the alleged 'motives' or 'bias' of anyone involved in the debate - in the end it is only ad hominem garbage which adds nothing to our knowledge and is also self-defeating as everyone has motives.

Bart Ehrman would have better served his cause by omitting the blatant hostility and just stuck to the facts, such as they are. When he introduces the topic with his weird rant about UFOs and 'holocaust denial' he's displaying a side of his personality which has no place in an historical debate.

But this blatant hostility points to the possibly of observer bias Horace Miner satirized in his "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" work.

Carl Sagan said using Percival Lowell as an example "when we have strong emotions we are libel to fool ourselves." Percival Lowell 'believed he was seeing a world networked with canals bringing water to the dry equatorial regions. He believed that planet was Earthlike. All in all, he believed too much.'

By comparing the Christ Myth theory as a whole to UFOs and 'holocaust denial' Bart Ehrman blows his credibility out the window.

UFOs are not ETV (Extraterrestrial Transport Vehicles) but "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." (USAF) so top secret experimental craft would be "UFOs".

The holocaust denial comparison as I have stated previous has to be IMHO one of the dumbest morally bankrupt comparisons to Jesus ever put out.

For the record there were 3,000 tons of truly contemporary (i.e. between 1938-1945) records presented at the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trials.[ The 1958 finding aids (eventually the index to the Holocaust evidence) was 62 volumes--just 4 books shy of the number of books (66) traditionally in the entire Bible! Then between 1958 and 2000 they added another 30 volumes, bringing the total to 92.

So Bart Ehrman is effectively claiming:

1) there were 3,000 tons of written records dating from 6 BCE to 36 CE showing Jesus existed

2) the most powerful government of the world (i.e. Rome) collected said evidence no later then 36 CE

3) the evidence was presented no later then 37 CE; AND

4) there was a 62 volume index of this evidence dating no later than 44 CE and a 92 volume index of this evidence dating from no later then 92 CE.

The totally insanity of such a position makes the paranoid hiding in his basement in fear of the black helicopters piloted by gray aliens lead by Elvis who call Area 51 home look rational by comparison!

 

[Brainache]

But this blatant hostility points to the possibly of observer bias Horace Miner satirized in his "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" work.

Carl Sagan said using Percival Lowell as an example "when we have strong emotions we are libel to fool ourselves." Percival Lowell 'believed he was seeing a world networked with canals bringing water to the dry equatorial regions. He believed that planet was Earthlike. All in all, he believed too much.'

By comparing the Christ Myth theory as a whole to UFOs and 'holocaust denial' Bart Ehrman blows his credibility out the window.

UFOs are not ETV (Extraterrestrial Transport Vehicles) but "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." (USAF) so top secret experimental craft would be "UFOs".

The holocaust denial comparison as I have stated previous has to be IMHO one of the dumbest morally bankrupt comparisons to Jesus ever put out.

For the record there were 3,000 tons of truly contemporary (i.e. between 1938-1945) records presented at the 1945-1946 Nuremberg Trials.[ The 1958 finding aids (eventually the index to the Holocaust evidence) was 62 volumes--just 4 books shy of the number of books (66) traditionally in the entire Bible! Then between 1958 and 2000 they added another 30 volumes, bringing the total to 92.

So Bart Ehrman is effectively claiming:

1) there were 3,000 tons of written records dating from 6 BCE to 36 CE showing Jesus existed

2) the most powerful government of the world (i.e. Rome) collected said evidence no later then 36 CE

3) the evidence was presented no later then 37 CE; AND

4) there was a 62 volume index of this evidence dating no later than 44 CE and a 92 volume index of this evidence dating from no later then 92 CE.

The totally insanity of such a position makes the paranoid hiding in his basement in fear of the black helicopters piloted by gray aliens lead by Elvis who call Area 51 home look rational by comparison!

Yes that is exactly what he said, or not.

I think the point was more about instant internet experts who want to deny the HJ out of personal biases, rather than actually look at what the Historians are saying.

The evidence for Jesus is poor, but so is the evidence for every other 1st century Jewish Rabbi.

Do we now have to conclude that none of them existed?

 

[JaysonR]

Ian,

That tangent had nothing to do with evidence for a physical Jesus, just to be clear.

As to my position:
I cannot say for certain either way, but I can say that nothing so far compels a solid conclusion that he existed.
What I am examining on the subject over time is a possible synthesis of other texts and stories which, at least in some part, became the Jesus tales, or greatly influenced them.
From there, if that leg goes through, then looking for which cultures are sympathetic to the tales and constructs which influenced the Jesus tales, and from there whom had relation with those groups.

For example, I am currently cataloging which text lists which cities and then I will color code that data to a map.
From there I will attempt to gather cultures which show frequency to those locations, specifically looking for curious clusters.

That is only a starting point, for then I have to look at the style, structure, and idoms of the texts and compare those to the cultures pooled.
Then I will need to revisted and compare the cultures which were sympathetic the stories proposed to influence the Jesus stories and see which cultures appear in both lists.

This will then produce one set of possible cultural "authors" to work from.

Perhaps that may yield some insight, perhaps not.
Either way, I will learn more about fascinating cultures along the way, and that is worth even more for me.

 

[Craig B]

@ianS

You will recall informing us about words by Paul which you stated were

actual words are unmistakable and undeniable, you repeatedly fail to agree that the words are the words!

but that I couldn't find the words "former earthly body" among them. I asked you to find them for me. Have you been able to do that yet?

 

[Brainache]

@ianS

You will recall informing us about words by Paul which you stated were but that I couldn't find the words "former earthly body" among them. I asked you to find them for me. Have you been able to do that yet?

I think you've joined me on his ignore list.

I got here by insisting that IanS explain how Paul said Jesus was a "Spirit" who handed out bread and wine to people while talking about his flesh and blood, and gave rulings on not getting divorced...

 

[zugzwang]

Incidentally, 'flesh and blood' was a stock expression, wasn't it, which meant something like 'human being'? But this doesn't imply that resurrection will be to a purely spiritual state; note, for example, that Paul says 'you are not in the flesh, you are in the spirit', (Rom. 8: 9-10), which does not mean that his addressees are not physical human beings.

I forgot to say that one cute translation of the 'flesh and blood' phrase, is 'the ego'. This is done mainly by New Age types, who then have the rather nice idea that the ego cannot enter heaven, since the ego by definition divides reality into fragments or parts, whereas heaven, we might assume, involves wholeness and unity. But this is way out in left field for most Christians.