The Case Against "The Case Against Historical Christ"

[Piggy]

I'm just starting this thread so as not to further sub-hijack another thread where I called R.G. Price's article "Jesus Myth: The Case Against Historical Jesus" a piece of crank scholarship.

I'm just going to go through his points, in order. It'll take me a while. If other people chime in, I might not respond, because that would end up being 14 different lines of discussion going on.

Here's his own summary of his argument:

The case that I will be outlining here is that there never was any "Jesus Christ" nor any meaningful real life basis for the story of "Jesus Christ". Like many other religious figures, "Jesus Christ" began as a theological concept, was later used as a character in allegorical stories, and was then historicized as someone whom people believed really existed. The belief in a literal "human" Jesus most likely emerged as eucharist rituals and theology developed around the concept of the "flesh" and "blood" of Christ and these concepts merged with allegorical narratives about the figure.

Or, to put it in bullet points:

1. "Jesus Christ" began as a theological concept.
2. The "Jesus Christ" character came to be used in allegorical stories.
3. The character in the stories was historicized into a "Jesus Christ" whom people believed really existed.
4. This historicization was most likely the result of a conflation of eucharistic rites and the allegorical tales.

So there we have it.

 

[NavyPack]

Sorry man, I missed your post by seconds!

"Originally Posted by Piggy
I haven't read any posts b/t this one and the last one from my previous session, and I don't have time to do so now, but I've been thinking about that no-Jesus site....

I think if I'm going to call it a crank site, then I have an obligation to at least state my case.

So I think I'll go through and respond to his points one by one.

It'll take me a while, but it should be interesting, and I'm sure I'll learn something."

Sir Swineus,

Cheers to that attitude towards the discussions on this board.

I feel most honored to congress w/ those who are willing to question/re-evaluate/rationally analyze a position/situation.

Such behavior implies a maturing of our species....
(i'm trying to be a glass .5 full on this)

To be honest, I feel a certain bias to the question, subsequent to reading that website, in this sense;
There have been 17-19 centuries of revisionism, selective redaction, and flat-out fraud. I feel it is worth considering that the presumption of historicity, to JC, should be critically examined. I.e., a fair amount of Devil's Advocatism(?) is not only prudent, but long overdue.

However, I try to remain emotionally distant to either... try...
But, you know how that goes.

I just want to be right.

I truly value your opinion,

NP

 

[Piggy]

Before we get into the 14 points, here's something from his introduction:

It is important to note that we have one, and only one, source of information about the life of Jesus and that is the Christian Gospels. The Gospels are the sole source of information about this figure; everything that we "know" about "him" depends on these sources.

This is not entirely accurate, and it's inaccurate in ways worth noting.

The Gospels are not our "sole source of information about this figure" so that "everything that we 'know' about 'him' depends" on them.

First, of course, there are Paul's letters. He's writing to groups he's founded, and some he has not founded, describing his meetings with other church leaders (most notably those from the true-apostolic camp) and hashing out matters of doctrine.

We can glean quite a bit from his letters about the beliefs of the very early church -- that is, from the time just a couple of decades after the purported crucifixion, before the composition of any of the gospels -- and the conflicts that arose within it.

We also have other literature of the day, as well as archaeological finds, to inform us about the place and the times and the people. And this is quite important, because it shows us what the norms are, what the customs are, how the religions were practiced, and so forth.

So our conclusions about the historicity of Jesus don't come from the gospels alone, but rather from an objective analysis of the known gospel texts in combination with everything else we know about early Christianity, as well as Hebrew culture in particular, and Ancient Near Eastern culture more generally, at the time.

 

[Piggy]

Another point from the intro:

There are two basic views of the Biblical Jesus as a real person today, the religious Christian view and the secular historical view. The religious Christian view takes the Gospels as accurate and reliable accounts of the life of Jesus, including all of the miracles. The religious Christian view demands that Jesus Christ was a popular and well known figure in the region, who drew crowds of thousands of people and performed great miracles, who was such a revolutionary figure that the Jewish priesthood was compelled to have him arrested and put to death in dramatic fashion before hundreds or thousands of witnesses.

The secular historical view, which may also be held by some Christians, takes the Gospels as exaggerated accounts of the life of a real Jesus. The secular historical view basically starts with the Gospels and then removes the fantastic or "supernatural" claims in the Gospels and accepts what is left as history. The secular historical view tends to minimize the role of Jesus in the region, stating instead that he was barely noticed by others. Secular historians who believe that Jesus existed rely on the Gospels as essentially historical, but inflated, accounts of his life.

Price gets off on the wrong foot here.

This statement in particular is entirely inaccurate:

The secular historical view basically starts with the Gospels and then removes the fantastic or "supernatural" claims in the Gospels and accepts what is left as history

That's not how actual textual scholarship works at all.

A textual scholar of ANE manuscripts would first point out that the modern notion of "history" isn't even applicable to these texts.

And nobody doing legitimate study of the Bible is doing anything as simplistic as attempting to winnow out "supernatural" claims.

What textual scholarship does is to attempt, as fully and accurately as possible, to determine who wrote or redacted a text, and when, and where, and what their sources were, and who their audience was, and why they wrote it, and how it was used within the community.

To do this, scholars compare texts to each other, pay painstaking attention to vocabulary and syntax, make note of historical references (or theological ones, or political ones, or anything else that gives a clue), trace sources, and so on and so forth. It's kinda boring for most folks, actually.

So we can begin by saying that Price's idea, and appreciation, of the actual scholarship is greatly off the mark.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Before we get into the 14 points, here's something from his introduction:



This is not entirely accurate, and it's inaccurate in ways worth noting.

The Gospels are not our "sole source of information about this figure" so that "everything that we 'know' about 'him' depends" on them.

First, of course, there are Paul's letters. He's writing to groups he's founded, and some he has not founded, describing his meetings with other church leaders (most notably those from the true-apostolic camp) and hashing out matters of doctrine.

We can glean quite a bit from his letters about the beliefs of the very early church -- that is, from the time just a couple of decades after the purported crucifixion, before the composition of any of the gospels -- and the conflicts that arose within it.

We also have other literature of the day, as well as archaeological finds, to inform us about the place and the times and the people. And this is quite important, because it shows us what the norms are, what the customs are, how the religions were practiced, and so forth.

So our conclusions about the historicity of Jesus don't come from the gospels alone, but rather from an objective analysis of the known gospel texts in combination with everything else we know about early Christianity, as well as Hebrew culture in particular, and Ancient Near Eastern culture more generally, at the time.

In all fairness, Piggy, You're conflating knowledge of the time/people in general with knowledge of a specific person. What we know about the specific individual referred to as Jesus Christ does come directly from the Gospels (perhaps a bit more from Paul's letters, but it's really pretty much the Gospels).

 

[Piggy]

The Gospel of Mark is the first story of Jesus that was written, and all others are dependent on it

Price gives a reasonable outline of the pedigrees of the gospels.

Mark's the earliest, a common-speech narrative from an urban gentile church, somewhat prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, about the time of Paul's latest letters, thirty years or so after the (purported) time of the crucifixion.

Luke and Matthew both rewrite Mark, Luke for a gentile congregation and Matthew for a Jewish congregation in Galilee, adding more material from a book of the sayings of Jesus they both had access to, and other sources they didn't share. Their versions of Mark weren't the same, btw.

John (who might be earlier than Matthew) is certainly writing for an urban gentile congregation with some heavy gnostic tendencies. It's impossible to tell whether he had access to any of the other gospels, or was working with his community's collection of writings that overlapped with the synoptics' sources.

If he'd been Jewish, he would certainly have felt obliged to cite directly, but for a gnostic Christian there may not have been any similar compunction.

However, in the closing 3 paragraphs, Price goes off the rails:

The fact that all three of the other narrative Gospels in the Bible are based directly or indirectly on the Gospel of Mark demonstrates the lack of other narrative information about Jesus. The Gospel of Mark became the root of the other Gospels because it was the only writing that provided narrative details about Jesus. The additions that the authors of Matthew and Luke made to the Gospel of Mark are primarily just the virgin birth narratives and some additional post-resurrection narratives.

There is also language that is shared between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke which is not in the Gospel of Mark. The most well known proposed explanation for this is the "Q" document theory, which purposes that there was some other source document which both the authors of Matthew and Luke used, but was not used by the author of Mark. An equally valid explanation is that both Matthew and Luke are simply based on an expanded version of Mark, or that what we call the Gospel of Mark is a shortened version of the original, which the authors of Matthew and Luke used.

The Gospel of John adds a few additional narrative elements to the synoptic template, but the Gospel of John is a much later Gospel, probably written some 40 to 50 years after the Gospel of Mark. The additional elements in John are basically a gnostic theology element and a "miraculous signs" element, both of which appear to be inventions of the author himself. Some scholars propose that the "miraculous signs" narrative in the Gospel of John is derived from yet another source, but it actually seems to be a narrative element designed by the author as a polemic against the Jews. The "miraculous signs" narrative in John shows Jesus doing many "miraculous signs", but then at the end says that even after all of this the Jews still didn't believe that he was the Son of God. Thus, this narrative advances one of the agendas of the Gospel of John, which is portraying the Jews as unreasonable betrayers of Christ.

Let's take these one at a time....

The fact that all three of the other narrative Gospels in the Bible are based directly or indirectly on the Gospel of Mark demonstrates the lack of other narrative information about Jesus. The Gospel of Mark became the root of the other Gospels because it was the only writing that provided narrative details about Jesus. The additions that the authors of Matthew and Luke made to the Gospel of Mark are primarily just the virgin birth narratives and some additional post-resurrection narratives.

That's simply not the case.

Each gospel writer was trying to do the same thing -- for his church (which at that time meant a small group meeting in each other's homes) to collect the accepted stories about Jesus into a narrative, and by default leave the other stories out. They're writing the canon for their group.

And each gospel writer had to deal with all of the different stories that were circulating orally and in codeces (a codex was a kind of book or pamphlet, as opposed to a scroll) at the time and place that he wrote.

In fact, that was the whole reason for writing -- to sort out the mess. Keep in mind, we have literally thousands of Christian codeces from the first couple of centuries CE, and that's undoubtedly a tiny fraction of what was in circulation.

Mark was the earliest biographer we know of. And obviously, it was the first successful attempt to write a canonical biography of Jesus.

Matthew and Luke -- written after the fall of the Second Temple and the destruction of the Priesthood, probably a few years before the start of the 2nd century -- used Mark because it had become accepted by their groups (among others). It wasn't the only source, by any means, but it was a privileged source.

I'm also surprised by the glib way that Price tosses out phrases like "some additional post-resurrection narratives". Here, he's talking about the apostolic witness, which sets up the whole dividing line between the true-apostolic (Jamesean) groups and the Pauline/gentile groups, as well as the ascention, which places Jesus firmly in the company of the highest of the annointed men of God, such as Elijah.

What seems to have happened here is that Price understood the basic source scholarship, but then made incorrect assumptions about the paucity/plethora of sources to draw his conclusion.

Then there's this:

There is also language that is shared between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke which is not in the Gospel of Mark. The most well known proposed explanation for this is the "Q" document theory, which purposes that there was some other source document which both the authors of Matthew and Luke used, but was not used by the author of Mark. An equally valid explanation is that both Matthew and Luke are simply based on an expanded version of Mark, or that what we call the Gospel of Mark is a shortened version of the original, which the authors of Matthew and Luke used.

Let's be perfectly clear about one thing. This "equally valid explanation" is made up out of thin air.

Nobody has ever run across any "expanded" Mark or any reference to, or even hint of, any such thing.

"Expanded Mark" is a pure invention of the imagination.

What's worse, Mark is a relatively crude, and certainly early, document. It has been added to. But no reason is known -- or, to my knowledge, has ever been proposed -- why anyone would want to cut material from Mark.

The claim of equal validity here is simply false.

As for his comments on John, it's definitely gentile, and it certainly asserts the miracles, but it then consistently makes the point that seeing the signs isn't the important thing, it's faith in Jesus (and having your whole household join you, if possible).

There's really nothing remarkable there.

 

[Piggy]

The Gospel of Mark shows clear signs of being written as an allegorical fiction

Here's how Price begins his second point:

The fact that the Gospel of Mark is the first narrative story of the life of Jesus that was written, and the three other stories about the life of Jesus are dependent on it either directly or indirectly, makes the Gospel of Mark the lynchpin of the entire Jesus story. Understanding Mark is the key to understanding the whole story of Jesus.

I have to just come on out and say that at this point we've left scholarship and entered into Hal Lindsey / In Search Of territory. This is crank methodology right here.

There is no lynchpin. Nothing hinges on how any aspect of Mark pans out, or on what any passage turns out to be.

The various versions of Mark are just part of what we have.

It happens to be the only Jesus-bio we have from before the Romans destroyed ancient (Temple-based) Judaism -- and along with it, pretty much everything a historical Jesus would have railed against -- so it's special in that way.

But we draw our conclusions from triangulating everything we've got -- after, of course, performing due process on each piece of evidence.

If all we had was Mark, we would know precious little. If we had lost Mark, we wouldn't know nearly as much as we do.

And that's about all you can say.

 

[Piggy]

Most scholars today agree that the Gospel of Mark was written either during or after the destruction of Judea by the Romans, which occurred around 70 CE. The most widely accepted dates for the writing of Mark range from between 66 CE to 100 CE, with a fringe of scholars claiming times outside of this range on both sides.

This is incorrect.

There are no references in Mark to date it past the destruction of the 2nd Temple. At one point, the utter destruction of the earthly Jerusalem is foretold, but that obviously was not the experience of the ancient audience, so it belongs with passages predicting, for example, the fall of Rome or the coming of the Kingdom of God to Earth.

The mainstream view is that Mark, alone among the gospels, was composed during the 2nd Temple, around the time of the latest letters of Paul.

 

[Piggy]

Hoo boy....

This particular point is going to take some time.

As for Mark being allegory rather than history....

Price certainly provides parallels to demonstrate that Mark (as well as the other gospels, for that matter, regardless of his "lynchpin" claim) isn't the same kind of document as a Greek or Roman "history", by providing citations from Josephus, Livy, and Tacitus.

But you'll notice that he can't find any of this alleged allegory to cite.

The most he can say about it is this:

Indeed the Jewish writer Philo wrote about symbolic and allegorical interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures shortly before Paul began writing his first letters about Jesus.

I'll have to pick up where I left off in a day or two, but suffice it to say that at this point we seem to be on the brink of dreaming up a subgenre of literature, to wed to our imaginary expanded Mark, in order to prop up this scenario.

 

[Kopji]

The notion that Mark was largely influenced by the Homeric Epics was proposed by Dennis R McDonald in 2000: http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2000/2000-09-16.html

...MacDonald also outlines the major parallels to be developed between the Iliad and Odyssey over the course of the book, and he explains the method he will employ in elucidating these parallels. His general scheme couples Jesus with Odysseus, Jesus' disciples with Odysseus' crew, and the Jewish authorities with Penelope's suitors (2). (MacDonald even suggests that Jesus was depicted as a carpenter mainly because Odysseus was one [18].) The criteria for assessing the likelihood of parallels between the Homeric epics and the Gospel of Mark are listed as accessibility, analogy, density, order, distinctiveness, and interpretability...

 

[Aepervius]

I am not sure really it does matter whether a JC existed or not, and whether it is provable that there are different source of his existence. The UNDENIABLE fact is that all that is put in his mouth, and all his purported action, magical or not, have only the gospel as source, and only the gospel.

For all we know, Judas or whoever just found an insane rambling person, used it for a scam, then denounced it and sent it to be executed while laughing all the way to the bank, whereas some poor schmuck were impressed that they wrote book on it. Or he could have been a great social philosopher. Or ... or... You can#t say. nobody can say. All we have is the gospel and their contradiction.

So... historicity of JC is at best a red herring.

 

[Kthulhut Fhtagn]

I am not sure really it does matter whether a JC existed or not, and whether it is provable that there are different source of his existence.

The faith of an entire religion is riding on the existence of Christ so I'd say it matters one megaton hell of a lot. Your latter statement matters to you personally because your claim below rides on it.

The UNDENIABLE fact is that all that is put in his mouth, and all his purported action, magical or not, have only the gospel as source, and only the gospel.

Piggy outlined a few other sources that tell us a great deal about Christ and having done some research on the subject, though clearly not as much as him, I'm inclined to agree.

So... historicity of JC is at best a red herring.

Ehh...you're using that term incorrectly. A red herring is an argument made that seemingly appears related to the topic at hand but is actually irrelevent. The historicity of Christ is very relevant to the topic at hand...which just so happens to be the historicity of Christ or mroe accurately defense in favor of the historicity of Christ.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

Piggy outlined a few other sources that tell us a great deal about Christ and having done some research on the subject, though clearly not as much as him, I'm inclined to agree.

I must have missed that part. Could you please list the sources that directly support the historicity of Christ? Not the historicity of Christianity, or Judaism, et al., nor the recited stories passed down through the generations, but of the man who was, supposedly, Jesus Christ.

 

[Manopolus]

Question, Piggy.

Your dates -- do they come from actual extant and dated documents (like a book of Mark which is physically of a certain age) or from estimates based on historian speculation? Do we actually have an extant physical document (or tomb marking, for that matter) mentioning J.C. that is dated within the first century A.D.? I was under the impression that the oldest physical document we had related to Christianity dates to about 197 A.D. or so. Please correct me if I'm wrong... I don't have a source, only a decent memory for stuff I've read (and I studied a lot of art history in college -- but that was admittedly quite a few years ago).

I'm not really criticizing... I am asking because you seem to know a bit more than I do about such things, and it might be a good idea to get my facts straight if I'm wrong. I've generally held to the view that J.C. was a fictional character to begin with, but only because the idea of fan worship gotten out of hand seems to fit quite well, especially considering the fact that whether J.C. actually existed or not was a question debated among early Christians. Unfortunately, I'll also have to freely admit that sometimes my "facts" get a little jumbled into a big pile of semi-knowledge that contains a lot of nonsense as I get farther from the source, and I haven't done any recent researching, so I could be wrong on any count.

I can probably find the earliest art pieces in one of my old art history texts if I look it up (if I've even still got it -- I think it may be at my dad's place). As I remember even that is contested as to whether it actually had any tie to the Christian religion, or just used a similar symbol, and dated around 40 years (possibly significantly more) after the supposed crucifixion. Then again, like I said... memory is suspect, I'll have to wait until I can actually look it up to give a reference.

 

[MG1962]

I must have missed that part. Could you please list the sources that directly support the historicity of Christ? Not the historicity of Christianity, or Judaism, et al., nor the recited stories passed down through the generations, but of the man who was, supposedly, Jesus Christ.

Could you do the same for any common man who lived in that region and during that time?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Question, Piggy.

Your dates -- do they come from actual extant and dated documents (like a book of Mark which is physically of a certain age) or from estimates based on historian speculation? Do we actually have an extant physical document (or tomb marking, for that matter) mentioning J.C. that is dated within the first century A.D.? I was under the impression that the oldest physical document we had related to Christianity dates to about 197 A.D. or so. Please correct me if I'm wrong... I don't have a source, only a decent memory for stuff I've read (and I studied a lot of art history in college -- but that was admittedly quite a few years ago).

I'm not really criticizing... I am asking because you seem to know a bit more than I do about such things, and it might be a good idea to get my facts straight if I'm wrong. I've generally held to the view that J.C. was a fictional character to begin with, but only because the idea of fan worship gotten out of hand seems to fit quite well, especially considering the fact that whether J.C. actually existed or not was a question debated among early Christians. Unfortunately, I'll also have to freely admit that sometimes my "facts" get a little jumbled into a big pile of semi-knowledge that contains a lot of nonsense as I get farther from the source, and I haven't done any recent researching, so I could be wrong on any count.

I can probably find the earliest art pieces in one of my old art history texts if I look it up (if I've even still got it -- I think it may be at my dad's place). As I remember even that is contested as to whether it actually had any tie to the Christian religion, or just used a similar symbol, and dated around 40 years (possibly significantly more) after the supposed crucifixion. Then again, like I said... memory is suspect, I'll have to wait until I can actually look it up to give a reference.

The earliest fragment of which I am aware is a small bit from the gospel of John dating to the early second century. Some folks want to push it back to the 90s, but I think most tend to agree that it dates from somewhere in the 110s to 130s. Since it is only a fragment, it raises an interesting issue -- did we have all of the gospel of John at that time or did it evolve? We are fairly certain that one story from John was only inserted in the early Middle Ages -- the story of the woman caught in adultery -- so it is clear that it evolved in that one instance. But I think it is still an open question how much of John's gospel existed at that early date? How much of the theology that we know from it now existed then and how much evolved over time?

 

[MG1962]

Since it is only a fragment, it raises an interesting issue -- did we have all of the gospel of John at that time or did it evolve?

I would be shocked to discover it didn't evolve. If we look at things like the Gospel of Thomas, it is basically a shopping list of sayings attributed to Jesus. The difference is, it was not padded or the sayings turned into illustrative stories to explain the point to the intended audience

 

[KDLadage]

Could you do the same for any common man who lived in that region and during that time?

Jesus the Christ, if he existed, was most certainly not a common man.

 

[MG1962]

Jesus the Christ, if he existed, was most certainly not a common man.

Outside the people who knew him, he most certainly was a common man

 

[devnull]

Outside the people who knew him, he most certainly was a common man

Really? The guy performed miracles, and you think he was common?

Maybe everyone had supernatural powas back then?