Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus

[dejudge]

* 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.

Actually there is no source of antiquity which states that a "modest group of soldiers" got John the Baptist.

What is a "modest group of soldiers" in the 1st century?

In any event, you are correct, the HJ argument does NOT add up.

In Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews it would appear that if Jesus of Nazareth did live and was deemed to be a False prophet or was leading the people astray he may have gotten his HEAD CUT OFF without a trial.

1. NOW it came to pass, while Fadus was procurator of Judea, that a certain magician, whose name was Theudas, (9) persuaded a great part of the people to take their effects with them, and follow him to the river Jordan; for he told them he was a prophet, and that he would, by his own command, divide the river, and afford them an easy passage over it; and many were deluded by his words.

However, Fadus did not permit them to make any advantage of his wild attempt, but sent a troop of horsemen out against them; who, falling upon them unexpectedly, slew many of them, and took many of them alive.

They also took Theudas alive, and cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem.

 

[dejudge]

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.

Please, please, please!! You made certain claims. You admitted Your Jesus is a legend like Arthur.

How did you come to such a conclusion? This is a rational discussion.

Certain characters are found in hundreds of manuscripts and Codices dated to the 2nd century or later.

One of the characters is called Jesus of Nazareth--- the Son of God, the Logos and God Creator.

Another is called Pontius Pilate, a governor of Judea under Tiberius.

There is external independent evidence for Pontius Pilate as a figure of history under Tiberius!!

There is NO, ZERO, external independent evidence for Jesus of Nazareth in the time of Pilate.

Jesus of Nazareth can be easily considered a figure of mythology until new evidence surfaces.

 

[JaysonR]

Why is Jesus my Jesus?
I don't own anyone.

I wrote that as far as it matters to me, Jesus is a legend. I used Arthur as an example of which kind of legend I am referring to and the purpose of that comparison was not regarding the historicity of the figure but instead referring to the value that legend has to anthropology.

 

[eight bits]

JaysonR

This assumes that the standard of the field has some absolute echelon of measure for all history.

No, it doessn't. I love it when somebody says that other people have "assumed" something. What an amazing coincidence that the miraculously assumed but undisclosed something is so often stupid, uninformed and smells like a month-old milk carton.

I made some observations about the nature of human normative reasoning under uncertainty. In particular, there is something odd here: near-unanimous consensus in the prsesence of meager and ambiguous evidence. If the near-unanimity is because even without much evidence, nearly all individuals have reached high confidence in the same direction, then that is what needs to be explained. Since, despite the surprise, that would be based on evidence, it should be fairly easy to explain - if not on an internet forum, then in a popular book or maybe academic course.

If, alternatively, the individual judgments are "near" equipoise (say 95-5 or closer, in eitther direction), then why are the opinions not more evenly divided, some for and some against?

Example I have 1000 identical-value coins. I flip each one, and observe that each is biased favoring heads, on average about 60-40, ranging from 51-49 to 90-10. OK. They are circulated coins, weathered and bruised. No big deal. Odd that spontaneous weathering so much favors heads, but all the coins have the same design. Still no big deal. Then I throw them all in a box, shake it up, pour the coins out on a table, and 999 of them are heads. WTF?

There's no assumption in the example, and asking a question is permissible among scholars without being falsely accused of harboring assumptions that aren't there, and which no reasonable person would entertain. It's not impossible that confining the biased disks in a box somehow further coordinates their preferred orientation in space. But how that happens does need to be explained. The observed behavior does not follow from each of the coins being somewhat biased based on their experience in circulation.

Depending on how it turns out, I may decide that the results from the box experiment are more informative about what's going on in the box than about how coins of that design have weathered in circulation. If weathering is the question which interests me, then I might overlook the box outcome altogether, and stick with the one-by-one results.

At no point have I assumed that the standard of the box has some absolute echelon of facedness for all coins. I'm just asking how the coins manage to be so well coordinated, even after their individual biases have been taken into account. The question is fair, Jayson.

 

[dejudge]

Why is Jesus my Jesus?
I don't own anyone.

I wrote that as far as it matters to me, Jesus is a legend. I used Arthur as an example of which kind of legend I am referring to and the purpose of that comparison was not regarding the historicity of the figure but instead referring to the value that legend has to anthropology.

Your response is very amusing.

You actively post in a thread entitled "Bart Ehrman on the Historical Jesus".

Then you admit Jesus is a legend like Arthur.

What source did you use to come to such a conclusion?

Did you not use the Jesus source--the Bible?

Your Jesus is the Jesus in the Bible or you made up your OWN Legend.

 

[JaysonR]

OK, then I was wrong, Eight bits.

In that case, your query is odd to me.
You posited that an individual would be expected to do the opposite of the field's concensus given the information, yet that didn't happen.
Are they holding some evidence we have not covered?
Are they uneducated?
Are they unreasonable?

Why would the field rest on existence with such terrible evidence?

 

[JaysonR]

Dejudge

I'm flattered to be amusing for you.
How do you think I came to my position?

 

[eight bits]

JaysonR

You posited that an individual would be expected to do the opposite of the field's concensus given the information, yet that didn't happen.

That is one way of saying it. You omitted the part where the consensus formed in the presence of meager and ambiguous evidence. That is important, since I also gave an example where evidence is copious and one-sided (evolution by natural selection in biology), where an individual would not be expected to do the opposite, and that doesn't often happen.

As to the rest, those are no doubt all good questions, but they don't answer my question, and I don't know the answers to them anyway. Obviously, if there was some additional evidence that I didn't know about, then I wouldn't know about it. Duh. As to the personal attributes of people in the field, I have read some other posters' remarks about that sort of thing, but I don't have much to say about that myself.

 

[JaysonR]

OK, so we are at a baseline and perhaps accept that the evidence is pretty crappy, but that the field is used to this in this period and derives conclusions that to a day-to-day standard would say is insufficient, and that the classification of historically evident as such conclusion does not equal actually extant.
From here, are we able to accept the paradox that Jesus may not have acctually existed, but may yet be historically evident?

 

[dejudge]

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)" ...

Actually, in "Against Heresies" 2.22 it is claimed the supposed crucifixion of Jesus happened around c 50 CE or about 20 years AFTER the 15th year of Tiberius when he was baptized by John.

Against Heresies 2.22 For it is altogether unreasonable to suppose that they were mistaken by twenty years, when they wished to prove Him younger than the times of Abraham..[/quote]

It has been completely overlooked that Irenaeus was supposed to be a PRESBYTER or Bishop of the Church of Lyons.

Based on Irenaeus, at around c 180 CE, it was TAUGHT in the Church of Lyons, by the Elders, by the Apostles and the Gospels that Jesus was Crucified c 50 CE when Claudius was Emperor.

The Church of Lyons could NOT have known of Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Corpus where Jesus was crucified some time BEFORE c 37 CE in the time of Pilate.

 

[Craig B]

Based on Irenaeus, at around c 180 CE, it was TAUGHT in the Church of Lyons, by the Elders, by the Apostles and the Gospels that Jesus was Crucified c 50 CE when Claudius was Emperor.

The Church of Lyons could NOT have known of Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Corpus where Jesus was crucified some time BEFORE c 37 CE in the time of Pilate.

Are you saying the gospels teach that Jesus was crucified in the reign of Claudius? Fascinating. Irenaeus knew these writings. Encyc Britt.

Regarding the New Testament canon, one finds in Adversus Haereses quotations from all the books of the New Testament with the exception of Philemon, II Peter, III John, and Jude.

 

[eight bits]

JaysonR

From here, are we able to accept the paradox that Jesus may not have acctually existed, but may yet be historically evident?

OK. I don't dispute that evidence, in general and any about any subject, could be interpreted both incorrectly and yet entirely reasoanbly. That's part of what makes uncertainty uncertain. But that still doesn't explain the near-unaminty about what could hardly be widespread bullet-proof individual confidence based on the available meager evidence.

 

[JaysonR]

That widespreadness is not a solidarity, and it's mostly accomplished by convention and not direct evidence.

 

[Belz...]

It's exactly what I expected - the hypocrisy would be revealed.

Don't pretend for an instant that you expected anything. You found an out to the discussion, and that's it.

I'm guessing the relentless trolling against dejudge is motivated

Trolling ? I'm desperately trying to point out to him how silly what he is doing is, on the odd chance that he is not a chatbot. You have failed to demonstrate how I am doing the same thing.

It's the trolling itself that is unreasoning anti-intellectualism.

 

[Belz...]

You are quite correct, as usual.

Sheesh, guys, get a room.

What's more they know they've already lost the argument when this is what they open with.

Oh, and now you can read minds ?

Shame!

And you accuse other people of being dishonest ?

 

[IanS]

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.

As I say (i.e. just agreed with someone earlier), people don’t usually have an abrupt change of mind in the middle of a thread on a subject like this. So I’m not really trying to persuade you (or anyone else) to what I am saying here. So we can perfectly amicably agree-to-disagree. However, just to explain a bit further …

… I am not interested in what bible studies scholars, theologians and Christian writers in general believe about Jesus. And as is probably obvious, I don’t have a great deal of respect for that as an academic university research field. I have probably explained before several times why I take that view, but if you think that’s a terrible thing, then please do keep in mind that many sceptics in all of these HJ threads, inc. similar massive threads on other forums such as RationalSkepticism and the Richard Dawkins Forum, as well as many authors of published books (see more below), have also been extremely critical of Bible Studies academia for reasons touched upon as follows …

… to understand much more about this I would strongly recommend that you get a copy of the book by Hector Avalos (The End of Bible Studies). Avalos is a professor of biblical studies at Iowa State Univ. Unusually, although Avalos was from childhood an extremely active evangelical preacher, even preaching creationism in public etc., he actually lost his faith and became an atheist whilst studying for what at the time he intended to be qualifications leading to a lectureship in Bible studies. Nevertheless he entered the academic Bible Scholarship profession as intended, and has for many years taught and researched the subject despite his atheist view.

But what Avalos explains very eloquently in his book, is how and why he has found from inside the profession, that the entire academic structure of Bible studies and related religious study fields, is very closely connected with support for Christian Theocracy and Theology as part of it’s historic role, and where it’s current day practitioners (i.e. university academics such as himself, Bart Ehrman, Dominic Crossan and all the rest of them) continue to use quite fallacious and flawed methods of research and continue to claim entirely false conclusions about how safe and reliable their opinions and results are in concluding that bible studies is relevant or valuable to us at all in the 21st century, let alone the fallacious reasoning and flawed methodology being used in the case of Jesus historicity.

Do try to read that book if you can (get it as an inter-Library loan, if you don’t want to pay for a copy). It’s written in careful academic style, and has almost 1000 proper academic references, i.e. many of them not to books or articles, but directly to research papers in the academic journals.

OK, so that is the first point, namely - biblical studies is not the same sort of truly independent expert subject area that we find for most other non-religious academic fields (e.g. in science, or geography, or music, or indeed mainstream history). And its’ flaws and deficiencies render it by no means safe as an area of proper “appeal to authority” in the way that you might be perfectly justified with something like physics or economics or art or almost any other non-religious field.

That is perhaps the most basic reason - i.e. the deeply flawed and often quite bogus nature, of the practices, methods, conclusions and motives for many “authorities” within academic bible studies - why I would say to you that it’s a mistake if you think we should be more concerned and more respectful of studying NT-Biblical issues such as the historicity of Jesus for it’s own academic sake of claimed discovery (as if it were a neutral scientific-type of research), rather than what I have just been putting to you as reasons of it’s impact and relevance for the lives of millions of people today via its support for Christianity and continued religious Christian belief.

And just as a final point on that - if anyone thinks the above (and the last previous sentence in particular) is some sort of grudge against bible studies and Christianity, that is NOT the point I am making or pursuing. What I am pointing out, is for example -

- why do you think it is that Bart Ehrman can write saying “almost all properly trained scholars on the planet” agree with his view of Jesus, when he says repeatedly that the evidence from the bible is sufficient to conclude that Jesus “certainly, definitely” did exist? And just to be clear, although in a profession with at a rough guess, maybe 10,000 or more bibles studies scholars of various types, we must of course find some who would disagree with Ehrman about the strength of his expression of “certainty”, of all those bible scholars mentioned in the these HJ threads, every single one of them has afaik said that they do agree with Ehrman that Jesus definitely did exist. Now, how in the world can anyone looking objectively at the biblical material as their “evidence”, possibly conclude that book/evidence is sufficient even to think Jesus might have been real, let alone write numerous books stating as an absolute fact that the evidence shows he was a certainty? The point is - there is a huge credibility gap there between the certainty of these bible studies academics and what the actual evidence shows and what most people in threads like this have long-since correctly realised for themselves about how appalling weak that evidence actually is and how appallingly weak and misguided are the arguments of scholars like Ehrman when they claim that the best evidence is for example that Paul met the actual brother of Jesus, hence Jesus must have existed!


OK, this is becoming quite a long reply/commentary, so I’ll stop there without going through the various other points. But bottom line is … (1) get a copy of Avalos’s book, because that will show you a very different view of the validity of bible studies as an academic field, and (2) this is one field of academia (perhaps the only field) where the appeal to authority is a huge mistake.

 

[JaysonR]

IanS,

While I appreciate your earnestness, I do not need a copy of any book to be aware of the social structure of that subfield.

My studies are 15th c BCE to 1st c BCE Middle East anthropology.
I have to read plenty of work I find questionable, and consequently you might have seen my bickering above regarding theologians.

This awareness does not alter the paradox I mentioned to Eight bits, nor am I frustrated by the paradox.

 

[Craig B]

That is perhaps the most basic reason - i.e. the deeply flawed and often quite bogus nature, of the practices, methods, conclusions and motives for many “authorities” within academic bible studies - why I would say to you that it’s a mistake if you think we should be more concerned and more respectful of studying NT-Biblical issues such as the historicity of Jesus for it’s own academic sake of claimed discovery (as if it were a neutral scientific-type of research), rather than what I have just been putting to you as reasons of it’s impact and relevance for the lives of millions of people today via its support for Christianity and continued religious Christian belief.

And just as a final point on that - if anyone thinks the above (and the last previous sentence in particular) is some sort of grudge against bible studies and Christianity, that is NOT the point I am making or pursuing.

It IS a point of view attributed to Hector Avalos.

Avalos argues that our world is best served by leaving the Bible as a relic of an ancient civilization instead of the "living" document most religionist scholars believe it should be. He urges his colleagues to concentrate on educating the broader society to recognize the irrelevance and even violent effects of the Bible in modern life.

http://earliestchristianhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/hector-avalos-new-book.html

 

[eight bits]

JaysonR

That widespreadness is not a solidarity, and it's mostly accomplished by convention and not direct evidence.

Based on other discussions, mostly with other posters, but also some with you, I would conjecture that what you call "convention" I would call a shared heuristic (or several shared heuristics).

If that is correct, then it should be possible to recite those heuristics. Then, a person could make an informed decision whether those heuristics are as likely to accomplish that person's inferential goals as other competing heuristics. This would remove the entire "argument from authority" problem for those who do adopt the heurisitics of the field and also allow people like me to understand better the social dynamics of a community with whom I share some interests.

It might also be good to alert Bart Ehrman that these things are heuristics, so that inferences drawn from them should not be treated as certainties, or anything near to that in meaning. And further, ne heends to be briefed that reasonable people may choose other heuristics than those he likes, or even that everybody else in his field likes, and so these other people may draw reasoanble conclusions that nevertheless differ from his and his colleagues'.

Put another way, if we accept your "paradox" as the price of pursuing some goals, then we might do well to consider that for some other purposes a different approach may be more productive.

 

[pakeha]

Isn't it a corollary of the Godwin Rule:

C1: Anyone who compares their opponent to a holocaust denier loses the argument.

Unless they're defending what they see as mainstream historical research. Then it's apparently a go-to opening line.

( . . . )

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.

What do you perceive to be Galilean philosophies of coexistence and tolerance?

( . . . )

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.

Seconded.

( . . . )
* 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. ( . . .)

I had the impression JtB was taken up by Herod's soldiers; that the Romans never entered this story at all.
I could be wrong on that, of course.