Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[mijopaalmc]

And Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare's plays....

 

[Craig B]

Ok, but I think the implication that Stone is drawing is that Origen is saying Josephus did have a positive belief about Jesus, in that he (ie:Josephus according to Origen) believed that Jesus was claimed to be, but was not in fact "the Christ".

Does that make sense?

No.

 

[maximara]

You show your ignorance ............. No academically published professional historian of today maintains that Jesus is only a figure of mythology.

Stone

Richard Carrier is academically published so this is not only a no true Scottsman statement it isn't even accurate.

 

[Craig B]

But you claim to have also read Pliny, did you not read Trajan's reply:
http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/pliny.html

They were no secret to The Emperor in ca 110 CE, so they weren't being very secret, were they?

It also indicates that there were Christians prior to 180 AD. Most certainly they had writings, but they were a small sect, and their writings were of no interest to the general public and were therefore not copied in large numbers. But there is a papyrus fragment dated c100-150 AD on palaeographic evidence, Rylands P52, containing words from gJohn 18:31-33.

 

[jobberone]

Peter was a fisherman which does not mean poor and uneducated. Some think Peter was likely well off. Who really knows? The authorship of the epistles is certainly contested and there are scholars on both sides. There are good arguments on both sides. I highly doubt Peter wrote Greek but he was probably fluent in Aramaic and could probably read and speak Hebrew. He may or may not have known some Latin as Jesus probably did.

Wikipedia isn't the greatest source for material although it can be pretty good. One article says Peter wasn't penned by him or a follower and another says who knows.

Again if you look at each datum by itself you can convince yourself of what you wish.

 

[pakeha]

... I highly doubt Peter wrote Greek but he was probably fluent in Aramaic and could probably read and speak Hebrew. He may or may not have known some Latin as Jesus probably did.

Wikipedia isn't the greatest source for material although it can be pretty good. One article says Peter wasn't penned by him or a follower and another says who knows.

Again if you look at each datum by itself you can convince yourself of what you wish.

Jesus probably knew some Latin?
That's interesting.
Where did you learn that?

In any case, jobberone, you've yet to defend your proposition 1 Peter was written by Peter.
Are you going to do so?

 

[Craig B]

Here's something for you from Jesus in the Bible. Jesus is preparing a mansion for you. You believe the Bible is a source of history for Jesus. John 14

dejudge, you are misrepresenting the views of your opponents. May I say, that is

completely unacceptable

What is argued is not that things the Bible says about Jesus are all historical. You know nobody is saying that dejudge and you're being very very naughty. It is that the existence of references to Jesus in the NT, and evidence for the early existence of a community of his followers may perhaps best be explained by the assumption that a historical person lies at the source of these phenomena. On the whole, I personally hold that to be quite plausible.

There are two types of opposition to that idea. One says simply, the evidence is not good enough; and that may well be correct. I sympathise with this view. But the real true mythicists say something more positive, namely this: that Jesus was never believed to have been a human being living on earth in the recent past; that Paul believed the crucifixion happened in a metaphysical domain, and so forth. Now there is not enough evidence to support that contention, in my view. The NT certainly provides evidence that early followers of Jesus believed him to have been a physical human being, living in the recent past.

There are others, or at least there is one other, namely your own good self, who believe that the entire corpus of early Christian literature was skilfully fabricated by forgers one and a half centuries after the event, for the purpose of deceiving people, like the tales of Baron Munchausen. When asked for evidence of this, they set down huge lists of the names of ancient authors who flourished in that century and a half, but don't cite the texts which these authors wrote. It's very frustrating, dejudge, as you may well imagine.

 

[pakeha]

dejudge, you are misrepresenting the views of your opponents. May I say, that is What is argued is not that things the Bible says about Jesus are all historical. You know nobody is saying that dejudge and you're being very very naughty. It is that the existence of references to Jesus in the NT, and evidence for the early existence of a community of his followers may perhaps best be explained by the assumption that a historical person lies at the source of these phenomena. On the whole, I personally hold that to be quite plausible.

There are two types of opposition to that idea. One says simply, the evidence is not good enough; and that may well be correct. I sympathise with this view. But the real true mythicists say something more positive, namely this: that Jesus was never believed to have been a human being living on earth in the recent past; that Paul believed the crucifixion happened in a metaphysical domain, and so forth. ...

Out of curiosity, is there anyone posting here who can be defined as a Real True Mythicist (RTM)?

 

[zugzwang]

Craig B wrote:

There are others, or at least there is one other, namely your own good self, who believe that the entire corpus of early Christian literature was skilfully fabricated by forgers one and a half centuries after the event, for the purpose of deceiving people, like the tales of Baron Munchausen. When asked for evidence of this, they set down huge lists of the names of ancient authors who flourished in that century and a half, but don't cite the texts which these authors wrote. It's very frustrating, dejudge, as you may well imagine.

It would also be a formidable feat of forgery, I think. Think of the synoptic gospels, and their interwoven nature - Matthew and Luke copying parts of Mark, but also having separate bits in common with each other, and also having unique chunks.

You also have to factor in the various different approaches found - for example, some texts more pro-Jewish than others, bits of Aramaic for local colour I suppose, the shift towards the high theology found in John, plus the unique Pauline contribution - if somebody forged all this, it was a phenomenal accomplishment.

I wonder what textual evidence is to hand to support this view?

 

[JaysonR]

Out of curiosity, is there anyone posting here who can be defined as a Real True Mythicist (RTM)?

Dejudge's position is the content fitting of the descriptions to that label.

 

[eight bits]

Brainache

Ok, but I think the implication that Stone is drawing is that Origen is saying Josephus did have a positive belief about Jesus, in that he (ie:Josephus according to Origen) believed that Jesus was claimed to be, but was not in fact "the Christ".

I can't say what Craig thinks Stone meant, so I'll just state my own view. I think Origen derived his estimate of Josephus' religious beliefs not by anything Josephus wrote about Jesus, but because Josephus presents himself as being Jewish, and more than as an ethnic identification. A Jew, beyond the strictly ethnic sense, doesn't typically believe Christian doctrines about Jesus. Jews typically believe that Jesus isn't the Christ, whether or not they believe Jesus lived.

Origen's purpose is to conscript non-Christian testimony that God has been working in recent history to advance the Christian agenda. If so, that would be "evidence" favoring Christian doctrines about "salvation history."

Origen, then, although writing about the James reference (which I think was originally about another Jesus anyway), sheds some light on the more flowery parts of the TF ("...if it be lawful to call him a man..."). That is, Origen never saw any such thing, and those bits (at least) were later enhancements of the original. They weren't plausibly written by an observant Jew, and Origen shares most readers' impression that Josephus was Jewish as opposed to Christian.

zugzwang

Disclaimer: it sometimes happens that I misspell a username. If that is the case, then it is unintentional and accidental, even if the misspelling is itself a possibly meaningful string.

I don't think the entire corpus is forged, but I do think that the corpus includes many, many documents whose authorship and dating must not be taken at face value. The Pastorals represent a lot of work by somebody, and that somebody wasn't Paul. The Petrine epistles fit in nicely with other NT writings, and they were a lot of work, too, but not Peter's.

Many hands make light work. Faith can move mountains, so a pen should be easy enough. There are plenty of novels which are about the same length as the canonical NT, and writing in "many vocies" but with a literary interdependence among chapters is part of many writers' skill. As I say, a single devout proto-Stephen King spinning a ghost story gone viral isn't my favorite theory of the NT, but authenticity is a problem in interpreting this material.

 

[Craig B]

... It would also be a formidable feat of forgery, I think. Think of the synoptic gospels, and their interwoven nature - Matthew and Luke copying parts of Mark, but also having separate bits in common with each other, and also having unique chunks.

Maybe dejudge is a follower of Jean Hardouin.

It is, however, as the originator of a variety of paradoxical theories that Hardouin is now best remembered. ... to the effect that, with the exception of the works of Homer, Herodotus and Cicero, the Natural History of Pliny, the Georgics of Virgil, and the Satires and Epistles of Horace, all the ancient classics of Greece and Rome were spurious, having been manufactured by monks of the 13th century, under the direction of a certain Severus Archontius. He denied the genuineness of most ancient works of art, coins and inscriptions, and declared that the New Testament was originally written in Latin.

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

 

[zugzwang]

eight bits wrote:

Many hands make light work. Faith can move mountains, so a pen should be easy enough. There are plenty of novels which are about the same length as the canonical NT, and writing in "many vocies" but with a literary interdependence among chapters is part of many writers' skill. As I say, a single devout proto-Stephen King spinning a ghost story gone viral isn't my favorite theory of the NT, but authenticity is a problem in interpreting this material.

Yes, it's not impossible, but it would be a stupendous literary feat. To be able to synthesize so many different elements, for example, shifting from the charismatic hasid of the synoptics, to the 'Logos' of John, would itself be a considerable creative work.

I suppose a committee might be able to do it, with different skills. You take the apocalyptic stuff, and I'll do that high theology stuff!

But I would like to see some textual evidence of it, rather than assertions. If it was all forged, there will be textual traces of that, as with the fake Pauline letters.

After all, it's textual analysis that suggests a Q source, so this kind of work is being done.

 

[pakeha]

Dejudge's position is the content fitting of the descriptions to that label.

Dunno, JaysonR, Craig B gave a concise definition for the breed (RTM)
"But the real true mythicists say something more positive, namely this: that Jesus was never believed to have been a human being living on earth in the recent past; that Paul believed the crucifixion happened in a metaphysical domain, and so forth"

The key word is "never", to my way of thinking.
I thought dejudge simply claims a 2nd century date for the origins of the church rather than claiming in the 1st century no one believed Jesus was a person walking about only recently.
After all, who'd put a limit to the extraordinary things people are capable of believing in a given century?

 

[JaysonR]

Dejudge appears to also hold that Jesus was never believed to be anything except a divine being of mythical scale; his date for the start of this myth belief seems to be the 2nd c CE.

 

[Brainache]

Dejudge appears to also hold that Jesus was never believed to be anything except a divine being of mythical scale; his date for the start of this myth belief seems to be the 2nd c CE.

Sometimes.

Then he says that there was secret Christians who didn't believe in Jesus, or something. I'm still waiting for clarification on that.

 

[pakeha]

Ah, I see what you mean now, JaysonR.
My point is that marks might have fallen for the scam evangelist team effort and believed the spiel.
Therefore, there might have been believers in an historical Jesus, though not necessarily the promoters of the action.

Are Jesus skeptics included in the RTM category?

 

[Brainache]

Ah, I see what you mean now, JaysonR.
My point is that marks might have fallen for the scam evangelist team effort and believed the spiel.
Therefore, there might have been believers in an historical Jesus, though not necessarily the promoters of the action.

Are Jesus skeptics included in the RTM category?

Are you saying that "Those from James" and "those of the circumcision" were actually actors following a script written by Paul and his cronies, to make the church goers of Corinth think that the Apostles weren't a fictional invention?

You can't be saying that.

 

[eight bits]

zugzwang

But I would like to see some textual evidence of it, rather than assertions.

Of what? That Paul didn't write the Pastorals, or that the Petrine epistles weren't written by a retired Galilean fisherman in mid First Century? These call for no more than fairly routine googlebingery, and you impress as someone who's already done more than that on these issues.

As I said,

I don't think the entire corpus is forged, ...

So, I'm not on the hook for evidence of what I didn't assert. However, hypothetically,

If it was all forged, there will be textual traces of that, as with the fake Pauline letters.

The textual traces are that the Pastorals have a different voice from Romans, etc. - they could not plausibly have been written by the same author on the assumption that the "earlier" letters are a sincere reflection of their author's situation at the time of their composition.

The assumption is harmless for establishing that "Paul didn't write 1 Timothy," since he didn't if there was no Paul in the first place. To restate the finding as "1 Timothy was written by somebody other than the author of Romans is what requires some assumption.

It is worth noting that imitating a specific target author is more difficult than merely feigning difference in viewpoint between two works. Some living ventriloquists give eight shows a week.

It follows that detecting different voices doesn't exclude single authorship. Again, that's not my position. Also, I'm aware of the uncertainties surrounding my own readings of this material.

pakeha, Jayson, speaking about Craig

Note: two intentional abbreviations of the user names, both previously tolerated without objection.

"But the real true mythicists say something more positive, namely this: that Jesus was never believed to have been a human being living on earth in the recent past; that Paul believed the crucifixion happened in a metaphysical domain, and so forth"

That agrees with my own understanding of what, say, Carrier proposes, broadly described, and Carrier does try to distinguish his teachings from others', especially others whose scholarship he disdains. (A group that also includes HJ'ers, among them our very own Bart Ehrman, at least lately. Apparently Carrier did once have some respect for Ehrman.)

So "real true" seems like a justified qualifier, and singling out this view for separate discussion and special scrutiny is justified, too. Just my opinion.

 

[pakeha]

Are you saying that "Those from James" and "those of the circumcision" were actually actors following a script written by Paul and his cronies, to make the church goers of Corinth think that the Apostles weren't a fictional invention?

You can't be saying that.

I'm not!
I'm saying that dejudge claims all the documents associated with the early church actually date from the 2nd century.

I'm trying to understand just what a RTM is, according to Craig B's definition, and wondering if any such person actually posts here.


Thanks, eight bits, for clearing up Carrier's position as a RTM.

My own impression is that there are many more Jesus skeptics here than RTMs, though I could be wrong about that.