Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[calebprime]

That said, here's once more what's my problem with the minimal Jesus approach.

Let's say I told you I know an economist named Maxine. Well, the name is somewhat less common these days, but out of literally millions of Germans, it's actually quite probable that one would exist even by sheer chance alone.

Now let's say I told you I know an economist named Maxine, who worked as a programmer, is in her mid-60's, has two children and two grandchildren, is a devout Marxist in spite of having a degree in economics, lives in Hamburg, etc, etc. None of those are supernatural or unbelievable in any way, but the probability of all those being true in the same person just went down a heck of a lot.

While there's nothing wrong with accepting the former by sheer probabilities alone, it wouldn't be wrong to want corroboration evidence before accepting the latter. Especially when something depends on it. E.g., if I were to say that my left-wing views are right because I know that economist and she agrees with me, you might be well advised to check if she actually exists and actually does agree. E.g., if I were to sell you a book about the amazing life of Maxine, you might want to check if I'm not making up most of the content.

That's my problem with arguments that start from some form of "there must have been a guy named Jesus because the name was common", but then from there proceed to tell you who he was, what he actually said, where he went, what his personal philosophy was, how he died, etc. Once you add all those details, the probability of it being true even if by chance alone goes down a lot. Arguing the former version doesn't mean one proved the latter.

And even then that doesn't show that even if such a guy existed, the story was actually based on him.

I mean I could argue that some arab with a name close enough to Abdul Alhazred existed (in fact, valid names exist that are closer to that than Yehoshua is to Jesus.) And it's not unbelievable that he would have lived for a while in Damascus and died there. Millions did over the centuries, after all. And maybe he did study and copy texts about ancient heathen cults. After all, in the golden age of the Abbasids or Fatimids, such studies were normal and even encouraged. And maybe he did write a book called the Kitab Al Azif (book of the whistling), even if with such a vague name maybe its contents aren't exactly the necronomicon. Or maybe just a title that was close enough, but got distorted later in the oral tradition. (E.g., "Kitab al Asif" would be the book of forgiveness.) Etc. So maybe a good enough equivalent of Abdul Alhazred might have existed by sheer chance alone.

But that doesn't show that Lovecraft actually based his story on the historical Alhazred, nor more crucially the existence of a chain of information so Lovecraft even COULD base it on a historical Alhazred. And in fact, we know he didn't.

I've been reading a lot on this subject lately, and I don't know anyone who argues that "there must have been a guy named Jesus because the name was common". That's merely comical. Can you think of any serious historian that says this?

As for Bulverisms, that's a different matter. While it may be not be a conclusive argument to say that -- for example -- someone is crazy or has an obvious bias or motive, it's an important step in understanding why they're saying what they're saying. It may be more interesting or more important to establish motives and credibility than underlying truth -- especially in two cases:

1) When they're obviously wrong, so it's boring and trivial to argue that they are, and far more interesting to establish why they're saying what they're saying, or who they are.

2) When the underlying facts are impossible to establish, inaccessible, etc. There again we want to know about the person who is talking about these inaccessible "facts".

So -- in two cases -- when the underlying truth is trivial or completely obscure, the truth is not really the issue.

The historical Jesus question is not a logical issue like the triangle in your example, after all.

-----------------------------------

It still seems more likely than not to me (weakly) that Paul met members of the early Jesus cult. I can't really have an independent opinion about that, because I can't read the original languages and I don't know enough background history.

Much depends on the letters of Paul. If his authentic letters* are forgeries in the sense of being completely made up (as opposed to combinations of separate letters) they are absolutely brilliant, because they create a character who is not particularly appealing, who is clearly in dispute with other early Christians, who is writing about collecting money and other mundane matters.

To say that Paul might be completely crazy is poor psychology. He might have been epileptic or a little (or very) dodgy, but that's not the same thing.

Well, I've said too much.

*eta: I mean the six that most scholars are pretty sure to be written by Paul. I'm considering the case that they they could have been forged by one other person, and finding it unlikely.

 

[Mister Agenda]

I can understand thinking the historical Jesus is plausible, even likely. Not doubted by any serious historian, though? If true, it says more about 'serious historians' than about the probability of the historical Jesus. Surely SOME doubt is reasonable.

 

[HansMustermann]

As for Bulverisms, that's a different matter. While it may be not be a conclusive argument to say that -- for example -- someone is crazy or has an obvious bias or motive, it's an important step in understanding why they're saying what they're saying. It may be more interesting or more important to establish motives and credibility than underlying truth -- especially in two cases:

1) When they're obviously wrong, so it's boring and trivial to argue that they are, and far more interesting to establish why they're saying what they're saying, or who they are.

2) When the underlying facts are impossible to establish, inaccessible, etc. There again we want to know about the person who is talking about these inaccessible "facts".

So -- in two cases -- when the underlying truth is trivial or completely obscure, the truth is not really the issue.

The historical Jesus question is not a logical issue like the triangle in your example, after all.

The problem is that it is nevertheless a combination of red herring and ad hominem circumstantial. It bypasses the issue of whether something actually is wrong or crazy, or whether actually the evidence for one side of the argument actually is so overwhelming and conclusive as to make the opposite opinion crazy, and tries to derail the talk into what kinds of crazy would make someone say that.

And it's a bulverism because instead of first establishing that something is wrong (and just postulating it trivial won't cut it: especially if it's trivial, then it should be an easy task to point out what makes it right or wrong), it skips to the abusive speculations before or instead of presenting anything that would actually meet the burden of proof.

In the words of C. S. Lewis, who coined the term, and probably explains it better than I do:

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism".​

and

Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.​

And what we see here is that exactly that first step is missing. The burden of proof for the existence of a HJ is never met to any degree of certitude that would warrant speculating about how crazy or secretly motivated one would need to be to allow for other possibilities. All that is EVER offered is a lot of handwaving, a lot of pulling assumptions out of the ass (e.g., about the reliability of those who transmitted the stories), a lot of argument from personal incredulity, and A LOT of appeal to authority, none of which hold any water logically.

 

[HansMustermann]

I can understand thinking the historical Jesus is plausible, even likely. Not doubted by any serious historian, though? If true, it says more about 'serious historians' than about the probability of the historical Jesus. Surely SOME doubt is reasonable.

Actually, that's probably the bigger thing that rubs me the wrong way about the whole thing. Now we get theologians telling people how historians think or how they work, and basically that you're not a serious historian unless you're their shade of gullible.

I'm sorry, but listening to a theologian about what "serious historians" think or believe, is like listening to an acupuncturist about what "serious medics" think or believe.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Ehrman has a Ph.D. in theology, from theological institutions. He does not actually have a degree in history. He may apply some similar methods (although not entirely the same), and read old manuscripts, but that makes him a historian like my typing text here makes me a novelist. So what he thinks about serious historians, he can keep to himself.

If you want to learn about the amount of doubt that is built in the contemporary historical method, you should ask a historian, not draw conclusions based on what a theologian thinks.

The fundamental difference is probably that in bible studies you start from assuming that you can study a single biased book and its variants and start from the assumption that you can find something true in there, while most historians would take the whole damned thing as one big red flag about any other book.

 

[IanS]

I can understand thinking the historical Jesus is plausible, even likely. Not doubted by any serious historian, though? If true, it says more about 'serious historians' than about the probability of the historical Jesus. Surely SOME doubt is reasonable.

There is a "trick" or “sleight of hand” in the statement that all serious academic “historians” accept that Jesus was a real person, and I think that trick has been very clearly exposed in the longer of the other current "historical Jesus" (HJ) threads.

The "trick" is - the academics being described as "historians" are bible studies scholars teaching biblical studies. They are not "historians” in the wider general sense of the majority of university lecturers who teach and research in non-religious areas of mainstream history.

Bible studies "historians" inc. people with a variety backgrounds, but by far the majority who write on the subject of Jesus Historicity have a lifelong interest in, and often a religious belief in (past or present) Jesus, God and Judeo Christian religion (in saying that, I include all those who write professionally about HJ, and that includes theologians and Christian writers in general, as well as Biblical Studies lecturers ... all of them describe themselves as "historians" in this field).

 

[Stone]

The problem is that it is nevertheless a combination of red herring and ad hominem circumstantial. It bypasses the issue of whether something actually is wrong or crazy, or whether actually the evidence for one side of the argument actually is so overwhelming and conclusive as to make the opposite opinion crazy, and tries to derail the talk into what kinds of crazy would make someone say that.

And it's a bulverism because instead of first establishing that something is wrong (and just postulating it trivial won't cut it: especially if it's trivial, then it should be an easy task to point out what makes it right or wrong), it skips to the abusive speculations before or instead of presenting anything that would actually meet the burden of proof.

In the words of C. S. Lewis, who coined the term, and probably explains it better than I do:

You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism".​

and

Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is "wishful thinking." You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.​

And what we see here is that exactly that first step is missing. The burden of proof for the existence of a HJ is never met to any degree of certitude that would warrant speculating about how crazy or secretly motivated one would need to be to allow for other possibilities. All that is EVER offered is a lot of handwaving, a lot of pulling assumptions out of the ass (e.g., about the reliability of those who transmitted the stories), a lot of argument from personal incredulity, and A LOT of appeal to authority, none of which hold any water logically.

Proof has nothing to do with ancient history. That's where you show your abysmal ignorance. Ancient history deals in levels of probability. Get it?

Probably not.

Stone

 

[pakeha]

Are you saying that the existence of a person who was later mythified into Jesus Christ is probable?
And because you think it's probable, anyone who disagrees with you is dishonest or ideologically biased?

 

[HansMustermann]

Proof has nothing to do with ancient history. That's where you show your abysmal ignorance. Ancient history deals in levels of probability. Get it?

Probably not.

Of course, if you had actually bothered to read what I wrote in the various threads on the topic, you'd see that I'm ok with probabilistic reasoning too. But you still have to show actual probabilities, not just handwaving personal plausibility as probability. And before you get to act as if one needs to be crazy or have hidden motives to entertain thoughts about alternate possibilities, you have to show that probabilities are OVERWHELMINGLY in your favour.

Stuff that's 99% certain gets you an excuse to speculate about what's wrong with those considering the alternative. Stuff that's 51% probably true, does not.

And again, you'd first actually have to show that you can support either probability. Just personal disbelief of the alternative is not probabilities.

Do YOU get that? Probably not.

And at any rate, even IF a discipline decided that it doesn't work by proper logic or probabilities, and it wants to just work by handwaaving and appeals to authority... so what? It doesn't mean anyone must play by those rules. If something doesn't quite meet the burden of proof to a high degree, that doesn't mean you have to stop all doubts. On the contrary, then it's all the more reason to doubt whether something insufficiently supported actually happened. Sorry, we're about 2500 years too late for it to still be up for debate as to whether logic is mandatory, or some domains can decide to just work by sophistry instead. It may have still been up for grabs at the time of Socrates, but by now it's not. If you can't support something enough, then you don't get to act as if one needs to be crazy to disbelieve. It applies just as much to one's pet pseudo-historical theories as it does to dowsing or spiritism. If you can't have proof, then that doesn't mean you get to act as if your crap has the same degree of certitude as the stuff that does have a proof.

Do YOU get that? Probably not.

 

[catsmate]

Proof has nothing to do with ancient history. That's where you show your abysmal ignorance. Ancient history deals in levels of probability. Get it?

Probably not.

Stone

Are you ever going to support your assertions, such as:

After all, all the data flatly contradicts such a knee-jerk assertion. However, these assertions remain exactly that, knee-jerk, because they proceed from ideological bias and not rigorous scrutiny of historical data.

with actual evidence?

 

[ricromo]

"I don't think there's any serious historian who doubts the existence of Jesus. There are a lot of people who want to write sensational books and make a lot of money who say Jesus didn't exist, but I don't know any serious scholar who doubts the existence of Jesus." - Bart D. Ehrman, December 2007.

I heard Bart make the above statement on a recorded radio show and wondered what people thought of it. It seemed to me pretty strong.

Yeah, and Bart is sure that he wasn't the son of god.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, Ehrman does get credit for that, but in the end something not being supernatural still isn't reason enough to just believe it happened. E.g., nothing in Wenamun is hinging on gods or miracles, but we're still pretty sure that it's the first historical novel we know of, and not an actual travel account.

But to see why just cutting out the miracles from a book and believing the rest won't cut it -- and indeed, historians have left that method behind in the 1800's -- we can do the same to Lovecraft's novels, for example.

E.g., an actual physicist wrote a paper about how the spatial distortions described in the Call Of Cthulhu, as well as the missing time for the surviving sailor, are actually perfectly in line with what General Relativity says about a space-time distortion bubble. In fact, not only that, but someone at the very center would experience time passing infinitely slow, so could appear to "eternal lie" to the outside world.

See, http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.8144

And not only that, but it's knowledge that would not be expected from laymen, so we could argue that it's unlikely that Lovecraft would simply invent something like that.

Incidentally, it's not the only place where such things happen in Lovecraft's works. E.g., Azathoth is described as being in the centre of the universe, yet outside it, which makes no sense for a layman's view of the universe at the time, but makes a lot of sense if you think of our universe as an expanding bubble with us on its surface.

But at any rate, there is a perfectly mundane and physical explanation for the phenomena in Call Of Cthulhu. You can pretend to reconstruct how it actually happened without needing to believe anything supernatural or divine.

But that doesn't make it true. It's still something that Lovecraft made up. Just cutting out the supernatural parts or reworking them into mundane explanations doesn't tell you that a story actually happened.

(Note: for what it's worth, though, I think that a problem that paper skips over is the extreme gravitational forces, and more importantly the extreme gravitational shear, someone would experience in a bubble of space-time so distorted as to explain the story. In fact, I don't think they could even enter it, as, unless I remember GR all wrong, which I probably am, that extreme gravity would push them outwards. But then again, I'm even worse at GR than at history, while that guy is an actual physicist, so he's probably right and I'm wrong.)

 

[Mister Agenda]

Yeah, and Bart is sure that he wasn't the son of god.

Welcome, ricromo!

 

[ricromo]

^ Hi mate! Do we know from other forums?

 

[TimCallahan]

As I've said before, ultimately, the historicity of Jesus may not be that important. Even the non-supernatural incidents in the narratives of the Christian scriptures - the gospels and the Book of Acts - are made up and based on one or more of four basic sources: the Jewish scriptures, Jewish apocalypticism and contemporary events seen through an apocalyptic lens, pagan mythology, and Greek literature.

About the only thing we can say with any certainty about a historical Jesus is that he was a messianic pretender who was, predictably, put to death by the Romans.

We can infer that, as one who thought himself to be the Messiah, he had an apocalyptic view and expected the end of the world in his generation. Assuming the teachings attributed to him at least somewhat approximate what he said, he also, in keeping with his apocalyptic views preached an anti-materialistic way of life, renunciation of the world and a severing of ties with it - including familial ties. However, these must remain inferences only. They are not corroborated by any non-Christian sources.

We also need to separate Jesus from the Christ or Christ Jesus of Paul. The latter is psychological / philosophical construct. Paul even says in Galatians that he didn't consult those who had known Jesus, but that his knowledge of Christ came through a direct revelation - one that could only have happened after the death of any historical Jesus.

 

[pgwenthold]

About the only thing we can say with any certainty about a historical Jesus is that he was a messianic pretender who was, predictably, put to death by the Romans.

Why do you say predictably? Did the Romans routinely put messianic pretenders to death (much less, by crucifixion)? Because it's not like there weren't a ton of them running around, right? Doesn't Josephus list a bunch of messiah-wannabees? What did the Romans do with them?

 

[Brainache]

Why do you say predictably? Did the Romans routinely put messianic pretenders to death (much less, by crucifixion)? Because it's not like there weren't a ton of them running around, right? Doesn't Josephus list a bunch of messiah-wannabees? What did the Romans do with them?

I think Pilate was particularly notorious for crucifying people. If Jesus was claiming the "True Priesthood" of Israel (as most of these Messiahs apparently were), he was trying to claim the authority that Rome currently held. If they caught him, the Romans would have crucified a bloke like that. They did crucify blokes like that.

Here's what the Jewish Encyclopedia says:http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4782-crucifixion

. A Jewish court could not have passed a sentence of death by crucifixion without violating the Jewish law. The Roman penal code recognized this cruel penalty from remote times (Aurelius Victor Cæsar, 41). It may have developed out of the primitive custom of "hanging" ("arbori suspendere") on the "arbor infelix," which was dedicated to the gods of the nether world. Seneca ("Epistola," 101) still calls the cross "infelix lignum." Trees were often used for crucifying convicts (Tertullian, "Apologia," viii. 16). Originally only slaves were crucified; hence "death on the cross" and "supplicium servile" were used indiscriminately (Tacitus, "Historia," iv. 3, 11). Later, provincial freedmen of obscure station ("humiles") were added to the class liable to this sentence. Roman citizens were exempt under all circumstances (Cicero, "Verr." i. 7; iii. 2, 24, 26; iv. 10 et seq.). The following crimes entailed this penalty: piracy, highway robbery, assassination, forgery, false testimony, mutiny, high treason, rebellion (see Pauly-Wissowa, "Real-Encyc." s.v. "Crux"; Josephus, "B. J." v. 11, § 1). Soldiers that deserted to the enemy and slaves who denounced their masters ("delatio domini")were also punished by death on the cross.

 

[pgwenthold]

I think Pilate was particularly notorious for crucifying people. If Jesus was claiming the "True Priesthood" of Israel (as most of these Messiahs apparently were), he was trying to claim the authority that Rome currently held. If they caught him, the Romans would have crucified a bloke like that. They did crucify blokes like that.

Here's what the Jewish Encyclopedia says:http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4782-crucifixion

So are there any examples of where they executed pretend Messiahs or not? Not "it makes sense" but actual, real examples? As I said, it's not like there weren't plenty of self-proclaimed Messiahs running aroynd. Why weren't they considered threats?

 

[Brainache]

So are there any examples of where they executed pretend Messiahs or not? Not "it makes sense" but actual, real examples? As I said, it's not like there weren't plenty of self-proclaimed Messiahs running aroynd. Why weren't they considered threats?

This from Josephus Antiquities Book 20:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/history/flavius-josephus/antiquities-jews/book-20/chapter-5.html

...And besides this, the sons of Judas of Galilee were now slain; I mean of that Judas who caused the people to revolt, when Cyrenius came to take an account of the estates of the Jews, as we have showed in a foregoing book. The names of those sons were James and Simon, whom Alexander commanded to be crucified.

This was during the 40s and 50s CE

 

[pgwenthold]

So James and Simon, sons of Judas, were slain (crucified? Doesn't say)

Were they self-proclaimed Messiahs? What is the evidence that Jesus caused people to revolt? Aside from the claim he was crucified?

 

[Brainache]

So James and Simon, sons of Judas, were slain (crucified? Doesn't say)

Yes it does:

...The names of those sons were James and Simon, whom Alexander commanded to be crucified

Were they self-proclaimed Messiahs?

Theudas claimed to be able to part the Jordan and lead them (thousands) like Joshua.

The sons of Judas The Galilean were Crucified because they represented the Galilean "Fourth Way" that Josephus describes earlier. They believed a prophecy about a great world leader arising... blah blah blah look them up.

What is the evidence that Jesus caused people to revolt? Aside from the claim he was crucified?

They called him a Galilean. A Nazorite (maybe). If he was claiming to be High Priest(ie: King of The Jews), he was guilty of Treason. "Line on the left, one cross each..."