Evidence for Jesus

When it comes right down to it, whether Jesus actually existed, is totally made up or is a composite of a number of people, may well be irrelevant. The gospels and the Book of Acts are works of fiction. Every miracle of Jesus or other material relating to his history was drawn from one of four basic sources: the Jewish scriptures, Jewish apocalypiticism and the politics of the day, pagan mythology and Greek literature.

Here are some examples:

In the Gospel of Matthew, the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas for betraying jesus are based on the price one paid if one's bull gored another's slave (Ex. 21:32) as well as the wages paid to the narrator in Zechariah (Zech. 11:12). In the next verse, God tells the prophet to cast the 30 shekels to the treasury (Heb. owtsar) in some translations or to the potter (Heb. yatsar) in others. Since Hebrew is written without vowels, the two words, owtsar and yatsar would differ in spelling only to the degree of one beginning with a vau (v or w) and the other with yodh (y). Since these two letters each consist of a single stroke, the yodh being a bit shorter, the confusion can well be the product of scribal error. In Matthew, Judas flings the thirty pieces of silver down in the temple. The priests decide that, since it's blood money, it can't be put in the treasury; so, they use it to buy a potter's field. Judas hanging himself is probably patterned after Ahithophel, a supporter of Absalom, hanging himself when he sees that Absalom's cause is lost (2 Sam. 17:23). Just as Ahithophel betrayed David, so Judas betrayed Jesus. In all the Bible New Testament and Old, Ahithophel and Judas are the only ones who hang themselves.

The magi who come from the east in Matthew's Nativity would be Parthian holy men, recalling the Parthian incursion, during the cycle of Roman civil wars, when Herod had to flee, and the Parthians set Antigonus Matathias, last scion of the Hasmoneans (Maccabees) on the throne.

Jesus' turning water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana, in the Gospel of John is taken straight from a ritual in which the priests of Dionysus locked the temple, in which they had places amphorae filled with water. The next day they would open the temple and the amphorae were "miraculously" filled with wine.

On two occasions in Acts, prisoners are supernaturally freed, their fetters falling off, and the gates of the prison opening of themselves to allow the prisoners to go free. In one case this happens to Peter (Acts 13:6 - 10). In another it happens to Paul and Silas (Acts 16:25, 26). Both incidents are taken from Euripides' The Bacchae, where the followers of Dionysus, having been imprisoned by Pentheus, are miraculously freed, their fetters falling off and the gates of the prison opening of themselves to let them go free.
 
Lowpro said:
Sort of like the Huckleberry Finn fallacy? Sure the Mississippi exists and sure young boys may have traveled down it and had an adventure but that doesn't make them Twain's Huck Finn nor validate his story to being necessarily true even though elements of them may be true such as the Mississippi existing.
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True but we have to know when we are dealing with historical fiction (ala Huckleberry Finn) and mythical/propagandist history (ala Longfellow's Paul Revere and Irving's Christopher Columbus)

One common idea among the extreme Christ mythists is that the Church or certain individuals created the Jesus story out of whole cloth aka the historical fiction option.

If anything, putting the NT in rough chronological order shows the evolution of Paul's vague Jesus into a more substantial person with various propagandist flourishes depending on the target audience.

Paul give us the barest details of Jesus the man to the point that we really know nothing of him.
 
I'd say though that that does not really contradict what Lowpro was saying.

Plus, it seems to me like propagandistic historical fiction is still historical fiction. Whether I invent some juicy bits about Frederick The Great to give myself some genealogical claim to greatness, or just for the sake of writing an 18'th century love story, it's still historical fiction.

Though I suppose it can make a point that the historicity of the setting is even less relevant. Since the purpose of propaganda is to be believed as true, you would probably pick real cities/professions/whatever for that fiction, at least as you don't need that for other purposes, instead of having to explain where Dunwich or Innsmouth are.
 
HansMustermann said:
I'd say though that that does not really contradict what Lowpro was saying.

Plus, it seems to me like propagandistic historical fiction is still historical fiction. Whether I invent some juicy bits about Frederick The Great to give myself some genealogical claim to greatness, or just for the sake of writing an 18'th century love story, it's still historical fiction.

Though I suppose it can make a point that the historicity of the setting is even less relevant. Since the purpose of propaganda is to be believed as true, you would probably pick real cities/professions/whatever for that fiction, at least as you don't need that for other purposes, instead of having to explain where Dunwich or Innsmouth are.
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The problem with this view is that all history is viewed through a distorting lens and hence at one level all history would be historical fiction.

Take Abraham Lincoln the great emancipator and champion of racial equality for example.

"What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races." (July 17, 1858)

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," (Aug. 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas)

"I will to the very last stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with Negroes." (Sept. 18, 1858, Charleston, Ill.)

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it" (Letter to Horace Greeley Aug. 22, 1862)

Despite these and many other examples of what Lincoln really thought on the matter of slavery the mythical-propagandistic version of Lincoln holds sway.

Much the same is true of about any famous president you care to name--people know the mythical-propagandistic versions more then the "true" historical version to the point the former have effectively become history.
 
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Well, if I thought that all history IS fiction, then we all could simply ignore it. What is IMHO more accurate to say is that historical sources CONTAIN various amounts of fiction, but I think what most serious historians are trying to do is precisely figure out which parts are fiction and discard them. Among other things AFAIK that's probably the main reason to want corroboration.

Also I'm more concerned with what can be adequately supported than with what falsehoods the uneducated masses believe. Plus that's not a problem specific to history. I mean, equally the uneducated masses believe that "quantum" is some vague wildcard for when they want to believe that quantum chi crystal pendants work, or that the stars determine their destiny, but neither means that physics is fiction. The real physics is that-a-way, the woowoo pseudo-physics is that other way, and the latter doesn't invalidate the former. Or the real medicine still isn't fiction, although the uneducated masses believe in homoeopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture and other fiction. I don't see why history is any different. Sure, the uneducated masses believe over-simplified half-truths and sometimes propagandistic fiction, but I don't think that makes it ALL fiction.

And I guess one could say some form of, 'yeah, but other disciplines don't have to deal with millennia of state-sponsored fiction'... but even that would be false. The USSR made Lysnkoism woowoo the official doctrine in biology, and it's so stupid that it would be funny if not for the fact that real biologists were killed or deported because of not having faith in it. The former dictator family of Romania sponsored research into some kind of water polymer woowoo, LONG after it was disproven everywhere else, because some snake oil peddler promised them some water of eternal youth. And yes, it was popularized and had books published on the topic and all. China under Mao insisted that one can make steel in a wood-fired oven in the back yard. And speakig of Mao, of course then there's the domain of economics where the layman sees maybe 10% real signal from actual economists and 40% partisan propaganda and paid-for PR disguised as economics, and 50% bullcrap by unqualified idiots who thought that Atlas Shrugged was proof of an economic and social theory. There are propaganda outfits like the Cato Institute which don't even hide the fact that they already found their One True Doctrine and are doing just propaganda. Economics and psychology are also polluted by racist idiots who will do anything to prove that them blacks is dumb. Psychology also has its good name tainted by the bullcrap that is evo-psych, and I could write pages about what's wrong with THAT, how it ALWAYS finds whatever CURRENT fad is in vogue to be the evolutionary way, how it postulates knowledge among primitive people that we only had for a century tops (e.g., inheritance of traits), and how it flatly goes against actual data from anthropologists, etc. And speaking of anthropology, it's being plagued by the uneducated idiots misusing and mis-representing it as the new racism and xenophobia fuel. Etc.

So basically the problem isn't even new or specific to history. Everyone has to deal with propaganda BS and with the 'intellectual proletar' believing idiocies, and has to separate the chaff from the grain.

So I still see no problem, really.
 
maximara said:
The problem with this view is that all history is viewed through a distorting lens and hence at one level all history would be historical fiction.

Take Abraham Lincoln the great emancipator and champion of racial equality for example.

"What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races." (July 17, 1858)

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," (Aug. 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas)

"I will to the very last stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with Negroes." (Sept. 18, 1858, Charleston, Ill.)

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it" (Letter to Horace Greeley Aug. 22, 1862)

Despite these and many other examples of what Lincoln really thought on the matter of slavery the mythical-propagandistic version of Lincoln holds sway.

Much the same is true of about any famous president you care to name--people know the mythical-propagandistic versions more then the "true" historical version to the point the former have effectively become history.
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You seem to have left out the Emancipation Proclamation as an example of what Lincoln felt about slavery.
 
Lincoln also seem to me to be very careful about the words he chooses. He says "he has no purpose," he will "stand by the law of the state," and advocate separation of the races. To say otherwise, no matter what he may have privately thought, would have been political suicide, probably. He was speaking to many people who advocated slavery and would save the Union over slavery if he had to. So would I.

So? We weren't there facing those people of 160 years ago. Lincoln was no fool and would have known what to say and how to say it more than any of us, as he was there and knew society intimately and first hand and we don't. We are viewing it significantly more than a century later.
 
tsig said:
You seem to have left out the Emancipation Proclamation as an example of what Lincoln felt about slavery.
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It could be viewed as a political move the couch the struggle in moral terms keeping what help the CSA was getting from Europe to a minimum.

It also gave intensive for CSA slaves to escape and go toward the Union army.

Look at what the Emancipation Proclamation did NOT do:

It free no slaves in the Union areas that had them (Delaware and Kentucky for example) or in areas the Union army controlled at the time it went into effect.

It did not outlaw slavery itself in the Confederate areas.


Back to Jesus, we have the situation that whenever we come to something in the Gospels that actually can be crosschecked with history we either find no evidence for it (Herod the Great's slaughter of innocents) or social political situations (Luke's census) that are totally illogical and-or nonsensical.
 
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maximara said:
It could be viewed as a political move the couch the struggle in moral terms keeping what help the CSA was getting from Europe to a minimum.

It also gave intensive for CSA slaves to escape and go toward the Union army.

Look at what the Emancipation Proclamation did NOT do:

It free no slaves in the Union areas that had them (Delaware and Kentucky for example) or in areas the Union army controlled at the time it went into effect.

It did not outlaw slavery itself in the Confederate areas.


Back to Jesus, we have the situation that whenever we come to something in the Gospels that actually can be crosschecked with history we either find no evidence for it (Herod the Great's slaughter of innocents) or social political situations (Luke's census) that are totally illogical and-or nonsensical.
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Yes, I think we're all aware of what the Emancipation Proclamation did and did not do. It is, or should be, common knowledge history for Americans. And it makes sense for that to have been the way it was written - to not alienate the Union States or try to force into effect legislation that could not yet be enforced in the CSA.

Still, about Jesus, there are many good points in this thread. Not much backs up the story, or much else in the bible. But when one little thing is corroborated, suddenly the believers trumpet it to the skies.

I still cannot get past the fact that anyone with Jesus' name or fitting his description was in the Roman lists at the time. That in itself it most telling, I think, as the Romans kept records of everything.

The fact that nothing 'checkable' matches up doesn't faze the believers, tho, does it?
 
Before I came to JREF I had a vague impression of Jesus as a real person but didn't accept the miracles associated with him. It has been educational to experience the sensation of finding out more only to learn less and less of what I had unskeptically accepted as fact is correct. The latest is to hear from John Cleese, no less, that we don't even know in which language the gospels were written.




ETA: For those like me who dislike videos the relevant piece starts at 10:09.
 
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Minarvia said:
Yes, I think we're all aware of what the Emancipation Proclamation did and did not do. It is, or should be, common knowledge history for Americans. And it makes sense for that to have been the way it was written - to not alienate the Union States or try to force into effect legislation that could not yet be enforced in the CSA.

Still, about Jesus, there are many good points in this thread. Not much backs up the story, or much else in the bible. But when one little thing is corroborated, suddenly the believers trumpet it to the skies.

I still cannot get past the fact that anyone with Jesus' name or fitting his description was in the Roman lists at the time. That in itself it most telling, I think, as the Romans kept records of everything.

The fact that nothing 'checkable' matches up doesn't faze the believers, tho, does it?
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Far from fazing them they'll argue that the lack of evidence is the best evidence we have.
 
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