Skepticwiki historical jesus

[scribble]

Josephus wasn't around for the census in 6 C.E. where Judas the Galilean started a rebellion, and Quirinius had to come in and conduct the census.

That's right, he wasn't. In fact, IIRC he wasn't born until after Jesus' death. Why do you bring him up? I am confused.

Or is it only biblical writers who are held to the standard that they must be contemporary with the events they describe?

IMO, any *source* must be contemporary with the events it describes... and that's only a start for what a source requires.

So no, not only Biblical writers. I think people who hold up Josephus as good extra-Biblical evidence for Jesus' existence are simply ignorant of the facts. If that's nothing to do with whatever you're getting at, forgive me... but I really don't know what you're going for here.

Seriously, the biblical writers aren't writing very good history, but that has more to do with credulousness than lack of closeness in time.

What support do you have for this claim? I would suspect that they fail as historians on both counts.

 

[jjramsey]

That's right, he wasn't. In fact, IIRC he wasn't born until after Jesus' death. Why do you bring him up? I am confused.

IMO, any *source* must be contemporary with the events it describes... and that's only a start for what a source requires.

So no, not only Biblical writers. I think people who hold up Josephus as good extra-Biblical evidence for Jesus' existence are simply ignorant of the facts. If that's nothing to do with whatever you're getting at, forgive me... but I really don't know what you're going for here.

What I'm getting at is that there is a double standard. What I mentioned from Josephus is not an affirmation of New Testament events, but a contradiction of them, specifically of the census in the birth narrative of Luke. If Luke is referring to the census described by Josephus, then he contradicts Matthew and arguably himself as well. Not just skeptics but also scholars rightfully point out this problem. Yet if the skeptics adopted your standard, they would be hoisted on their own petards.

That said, the fact of the matter is that none of the historians of ancient history believes that "any *source* must be contemporary with the events it describes." Aside from that leading to most of them being mute, it also is unreasonable, since it excludes works that could easily be based on archival sources or other good information. Instead, they make use of the sources that they do have, and try to assess their reliability, for good or ill.

 

[jjramsey]

A interesting article on Peter Kirby's Christian Origins blog:


Did the gospels have any 'historical' intent?

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

Im still having trouble not seeing how you are not using the bible to prove the bible

I see where you are coming from: the only account of Jesus is in the Bible, so using the Bible to prove the existence of Jesus is just bootstrapping. That would be like proving that Kilgore Trout existed by referencing a Kurt Vonnegut novel. But there is a difference. Kilgore Trout was never known or had any influence before Kurt Vonnegut made him up and wrote books about him. Jesus was known and had influence before books were written about him.

The question is not to “prove the Bible”. The question is how did the belief that “there was a man named Jesus” come about? It didn’t come from the Bible. The Bible came much later. It didn’t even come from the early Gospels. The New Testament stories came FROM the Jesus character, In fact, the Jesus character was the inspiration to create the religion and followers who then wrote the books about him. This is vastly different (the exact opposite) from someone who wrote a book about a character who subsequently had influence.

The question of “where did the belief that there was a man named Jesus” begin, is the question.

Option 1) There was a guy named Jesus who was a rebellious Jew who got some followers, challenged authority, ended up in trouble, and got himself killed. His followers then spread his story and message pumping it up with the ordinary folk legends and fitting in some matches to prophesies. Just like folk legends about all kinds of more contemporary heroes (Elivs lives, George Washington & the cherry tree, etc.) Things started out small as a little Jewish sect. It got spread to gentiles. It flourished. More legends and stories that would appeal to certain groups got thrown in. Eventually all the written stuff got compiled and you got some Gospels that eventually created the Bible.

Option 2) There was no Jesus. It was all made up. Selling this would be a tricky task. If you tried to sell this Jesus character to contemporaries, they wouldn’t buy it because it would be current enough that it could be proven false. Even if you put the made-up character in the past, say 100 years, you would have a tough sell. If you say “look, here’s the religious truth preached by a guy that lived a hundred years ago that you never heard of”, people will certainly question why what this guy said or did is so significant if nobody has ever heard of him.

So, was there some devilish complex conspiracy to create a fictional Jesus and try to sell it to contemporaries and somehow bypass their questions of his non-existence and forge document to pretend there was already a movement for this fictional character and play the scheme off underground for hundreds of years and never get caught? Or, was Jesus a real guy that inspired a inspired a small Jewish cult that slowly developed into Christaianty who exaggerated his life and stories? If you have Occam’s razor at hand, I think you can cut yourself the best possible answer.

This doesn’t “prove the Bible”. It doesn’t prove that anything that the Bible says Jesus did is true. But the evidence (the Bible and the rise of the Christian faith) suggests that Jesus was a real guy.

 

[pipelineaudio]

OK, so it's not necessarily the case that the author of Mark intended to fool the suckers, but then again, neither is the case for Joseph Smith. Should we be able to use the same case for the book of Mormon?

Being from the 602 area code, I was gonna say...

Definitely good point

 

[Seb1]

The question is not to “prove the Bible”. The question is how did the belief that “there was a man named Jesus” come about? It didn’t come from the Bible. The Bible came much later. It didn’t even come from the early Gospels. The New Testament stories came FROM the Jesus character, In fact, the Jesus character was the inspiration to create the religion and followers who then wrote the books about him. This is vastly different (the exact opposite) from someone who wrote a book about a character who subsequently had influence.

The question of “where did the belief that there was a man named Jesus” begin, is the question.

Option 1) There was a guy named Jesus who was a rebellious Jew who got some followers, challenged authority, ended up in trouble, and got himself killed. His followers then spread his story and message pumping it up with the ordinary folk legends and fitting in some matches to prophesies. Just like folk legends about all kinds of more contemporary heroes (Elivs lives, George Washington & the cherry tree, etc.) Things started out small as a little Jewish sect. It got spread to gentiles. It flourished. More legends and stories that would appeal to certain groups got thrown in. Eventually all the written stuff got compiled and you got some Gospels that eventually created the Bible.

Option 2) There was no Jesus. It was all made up. Selling this would be a tricky task. If you tried to sell this Jesus character to contemporaries, they wouldn’t buy it because it would be current enough that it could be proven false. Even if you put the made-up character in the past, say 100 years, you would have a tough sell. If you say “look, here’s the religious truth preached by a guy that lived a hundred years ago that you never heard of”, people will certainly question why what this guy said or did is so significant if nobody has ever heard of him.

So, was there some devilish complex conspiracy to create a fictional Jesus and try to sell it to contemporaries and somehow bypass their questions of his non-existence and forge document to pretend there was already a movement for this fictional character and play the scheme off underground for hundreds of years and never get caught? Or, was Jesus a real guy that inspired a inspired a small Jewish cult that slowly developed into Christaianty who exaggerated his life and stories? If you have Occam’s razor at hand, I think you can cut yourself the best possible answer.

This doesn’t “prove the Bible”. It doesn’t prove that anything that the Bible says Jesus did is true. But the evidence (the Bible and the rise of the Christian faith) suggests that Jesus was a real guy.

Not so. Option 1 is right of course, the Jesus figure was around before any writings about him of course, before Paul's writings, and before the gospels were written. But I don't see sufficient evidence that the church viewed him as a historical character living in the recent past. Why were there otherwise no mention of any historical data before at least the 150's?

As for option 2, that would simply mean that some historical statements were added to an already expanding, oral and written, story. Why would people have difficulties in believing in it? Sure, even today, some people would believe me if I started a religion based on a fictional character that's supposed to have lived a century ago or so. And that's in our information age. Those days, checking a story would be very difficult. Most people weren't that very sceptical about things.
Sure, today most people would be sceptical, as there are sceptics today asking the questions the people then should have asked. Some did, but the church didn't counter them with historical evidence, they were saying: "Hey, we don't believe anything different from your belief in the gods".

 

[Dr Adequate]

Well, he may have wanted it to be taken as fact, or expected it to be taken as fact, but that doesn't mean it has any factual basis at all, or even that he thought it had factual basis. It's still fiction. Hubbard more or less proclaimed that he was going to write fiction. Yet, far too many people treat it as fact.

So in this case, we have a text where 1) there is no indication in the text that the author intended it to be fiction, and 2) it was still accepted as true by a very large number of people, even despite the fact that it is clearly a fictional account, based on extracurricular writings of the author.

Again, if L Ron Hubbard had not made it so evident that Dianetics was purely an invention, what would there be against it?

OK, so it's not necessarily the case that the author of Mark intended to fool the suckers, but then again, neither is the case for Joseph Smith. Should we be able to use the same case for the book of Mormon?

I think these are false analogies. Better analogies would be to Scientologist and Mormon biographies of HUbbard and Smith respectively.

These biographies contain, presented as fact, lots of stuff which isn't actually true, and which is indeed fantastic and implusible. Yet if two thousand years from now we got hold of half-a-dozen or so Scientologist (or Mormon) histories of Scientology (or Mormonism), what ought we to conclude?

We would, I think, prefer the relatively straightforward explanation that Scientology was founded by a real person called L Ron Hubbard, that Mormonism was founded by a real person called Joseph Smith, and that they had been the subject of fabulation by themselves or their followers.

If someone was to suggest instead that the religions were founded, respectively, by (for example) David Miscavage and Brigham Young, and that Hubbard and Smith never existed, I should regard that as being intrinsically a much less likely hypothesis, because that is just not how history works, dammit.

 

[Seb1]

We would, I think, prefer the relatively straightforward explanation that Scientology was founded by a real person called L Ron Hubbard, that Mormonism was founded by a real person called Joseph Smith, and that they had been the subject of fabulation by themselves or their followers.

If someone was to suggest instead that the religions were founded, respectively, by (for example) David Miscavage and Brigham Young, and that Hubbard and Smith never existed, I should regard that as being intrinsically a much less likely hypothesis, because that is just not how history works, dammit.

That depends whether historic documents from the early beginning showed that the followers believed in Joseph Smith and Hubbard as historic persons, showing knowledge about their lifes, when they were born, where they lived, what they teached and so on.

 

[Beerina]

I think thats the point I was trying to make, using the bible to prove the bible seems like circular reasoning

Actually, older documents clogged with unbelievable stories can be assumed to be largely unreliable because of the obvious fictions therein.

The rest becomes just a highly academic job of trying to discern if there are any kernels of truth in there. But if the stories exist, and largely derive from earlier myths, then even if there was a Jesus, he wasn't the guy who "did" those myths.

 

[Seb1]

But if the stories exist, and largely derive from earlier myths, then even if there was a Jesus, he wasn't the guy who "did" those myths.

And if he wasn't the guy who did those myths, the Jesus of the gospels didn't exist. Not much use to just say there were a guy named Jesus. Lots of people were.
And how do you seperate facts from fiction, by guesswork? No, you have to dispose of the whole idea.

 

[jjramsey]

And how do you seperate facts from fiction, by guesswork?

This question was answered earlier in the thread.

No, you have to dispose of the whole idea.

This is grossly simplistic.

 

[Dr Adequate]

That depends whether historic documents from the early beginning showed that the followers believed in Joseph Smith and Hubbard as historic persons, showing knowledge about their lifes, when they were born, where they lived, what they teached and so on.

Well, let's continue the analogy. Suppose we had the same sort of information (2000 years from now) about American history as we do today about the history of Israel in the 1st century AD. That is to say, a scanty collection of damaged works recounting the essential history of some completely different civilization.

Let's say the UK.

Suppose that of historical works, what survived was a biography of Disraeli, the speeches of Gladstone, an anthology of the poets of the First World War, a book about Churchill's role in WWII --- then what independent evidence would we have of the reality of Joseph Smith?

 

[Seb1]

None. That's the condition of historical research.

 

[Seb1]

But we actually have a lot of historical material from the ancient era, and a very prominent person, well known as Jesus, who supposedly performed a numerous miracles and so on, should have caught someones attention.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Hold on. You are assuming in your counter-argument that if Jesus existed, then he performed the miracles associated with him.

But that is not what I am arguing. Suppose he was in fact just one more Jewish troublemaker in the outer reaches of the Roman Empire, and that he only became an important cult figure after his death. What then? Would we not expect to find, in the historical record, just what we do find?

We do not have "a lot" of historical material from the ancient era, and certainly not from Israel. If you think Jesus should appear in some of the historical texts which have survived, can you say which ones?

And your argument partly assumes the thing to be proved. You say that if he existed people would have written about him. Yeah. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John ...

Paulisonne recently posted this link. As you can see, most of it is evidence that early Christians existed and believed in Jesus, which I take it is uncontroversial. The quote from the Babylonian Talmud looks interesting though.

 

[LW]

If you think Jesus should appear in some of the historical texts which have survived, can you say which ones?

Josephus. And in my opinion, the likely explanation is that he did appear there but later Christian sages turned his reference upside down.

Second candidate is Philo but his historical texts have been mostly lost and only extracts from there are known. And he seems to have been interested mostly of the ancient history so he might not have written about events happening in his own life time. [My knowledge about his writings is quite small so I might be wrong about this characterization.]

 

[This Guy]

Paulisonne recently posted this link. As you can see, most of it is evidence that early Christians existed and believed in Jesus, which I take it is uncontroversial. The quote from the Babylonian Talmud looks interesting though.

The problems with the Talmud are (IMHO) -

There was no herald that went out for 40 days before the Crucifixion, Jesus wasn't accused of sorcery, wasn't stoned (I don't believe). And which Yeshu would this be? Jesus was a common name.

Anyway, here's some more info on that Talmud passage. Not saying it's valid or not. Just more info

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/JewishJesus/b_san43a.html

ETA\

Found something else interesting in terms of the Talmud passage -

http://www.messiahtruth.com/name.html

"This essay examined the Hebrew proper name (Yeshu'a), and tested the validity of its use by the various groups of Hebrew-Christians as the true given Hebrew name of Jesus. The data clearly indicate that there is no Biblical nor historically credible and valid evidence to justify this association. Quite to the contrary, it appears to be a recently fashioned application with a specific purpose rather than an historical fact."

Again, not saying it's valid. Just more info

 

[Leif Roar]

But we actually have a lot of historical material from the ancient era, and a very prominent person, well known as Jesus, who supposedly performed a numerous miracles and so on, should have caught someones attention.

Even on the assumption that the four gospels are completely true and contains no falsehoods, exaggerations or mistakes -- and this is one hell of an assumption to make when we consider the internal inconsistencies between them and that they were written several decades after the fact from oral tradition (not to mention the outlandish claims of miracles) -- Jesus was hardly a "very prominent person" in the eyes of his time.

For any outside observer stories about Jesus would just have been one more religious leader with a following, no more than a few thousands at most, and the typical stories of miracles that tend to surround such. He did not lead an armed rebellion or get involved with Roman politics so why should anyone in a position of power take particular notice of him?

 

[Dr Adequate]

There was no herald that went out for 40 days before the Crucifixion...

Well, what you mean is that this does not agree with the Bible accounts.

Jesus wasn't accused of sorcery...

That accusation does appear in the Bible, although not in accounts of the trial.

wasn't stoned (I don't believe).

Despite what the herald says, the tradition does not record a stoning but a "hanging".

And which Yeshu would this be? Jesus was a common name.

One accused of corrupting religion and hanged at Passover. Hardly conclusive, I know.

Anyway, here's some more info on that Talmud passage. Not saying it's valid or not. Just more info.

What I would most like is a date for the passage. Paulisonne's link doesn't give one, and nor does yours.

 

[LW]

What I would most like is a date for the passage. Paulisonne's link doesn't give one, and nor does yours.

Early Christian Writings gives the possible range of 188-217 AD.