What counts as a historical Jesus?

[TimONeill2]

http://www.nazarethvillage.com/research/content/archaeology

http://www.nazarethmyth.info/

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

http://www.thenazareneway.com/nazarene_or_nazareth.htm

The first of those links mentions the work of two actual archaeologists, but it also supports the idea Nazareth was inhabited in the early First Century, so I have no idea why you included it. The second link is to the stuff by a piano teacher who has never been to Nazareth, has no archaeological training and who's amateurish work on the subject has been critiqued by real archaeologists and dismissed as nonsense. The piano teacher in question also just happens (surprise, surprise) to be another Jesus Myth hobbyist. Then we have a website by a ranting Myther who simply repeats the piano teacher's claims. Finally we have a New Age site.

So, only two archaeologists in there and they contradict Hans' assertion. Given that many Jewish archaeologists from the IAA have excavated in Nazareth and all agree it was inhabited in the early First Century, you're going to need more than some amateur hour stuff from the bumbling piano teacher and his parrots.

So, any actual archaeologists who support Hans' claims, or is this another example of Jesus Mythicists asking us to believe that all the silly experts are wrong and hobbyist dabblers with an agenda hold the truth?

 

[HansMustermann]

I'm not sure why you thought that posting the same content-free dismissal would do more if posted twice than it did the first time, though? Are you going to go the The Hunting Of The Snark way now?

Seriously, the appeal to authority is:

1. Always a fallacy in formal logic. It doesn't matter who some guy is, only if his arguments are sound.

2. An allowable shortcut in informal logic, as a fairly weak induction argument, and never actually meaning even there that an argument is right or wrong. It just means you can take a shortcut for whether you want to believe it or not, or who you want to believe, but it's basically not saying much else and isn't really binding for anyone else.

Nobody says that being an expert automatically makes one wrong, not that not being an expert makes one right. But it doesn't work automatically the other way around either.

The fact is, in any domain, there have been plenty of cases where authority didn't equal being right. E.g., in Physics one of the most important theories of the 12'th century came from a patent office clerk, and conversely then when he was an authority on Physics, he fudged a number for no other reason than wanting to believe that the universe is static, and was wrong.

The idea that one can basically say, 'no, don't listen to that guy, he's a patent clerk, not a professor at the right universities' is pretty much bunk from the get go. Even informal logic only says you can take that inductive shortcut to guess, pretty much, 'nah, I'd rather believe that Lorentz guy, he's a real professor.' It doesn't mean you can use it to tell who's actually right or wrong.

And really, for virtually any real science there is no reason to, because they have the data and the maths or logic to back up what they claim. Even if someone comes and claims something wrong, there is no reason to say, 'no, don't listen to him, he doesn't have tenure', when you can say, 'no, he's wrong and here's what's wrong with it.' Especially if someone is supposed to be way out of his or her league, that should just make it easier to spot the fallacy, no?

The only domains where I'm supposed to just only listen to the right initiates are woowoo domains like mysticism or Jesus.

Dismissing something because it comes from a "myther" is even more surrealistic. Oh, how easy life would be, if one could decide to only acknowledge arguments from people one agrees with.

 

[HansMustermann]

That said, again, Jewish archaeologists found exactly one house, and it's dated to the 1st to 2nd centuries CE. In fact, here's the press release by the Israeli Antiquities Authority: http://www.antiquities.org.il/article_Item_eng.asp?sec_id=25&subj_id=240&id=1638&module_id=#as

Especially, since you love your authorities, here's a claim by the same Dr Alexandre everyone loves to bring up when 'proving' Jesus: "Until now a number of tombs from the time of Jesus were found in Nazareth; however, no settlement remains have been discovered that are attributed to this period"

At any rate, what we have is ONE house dated to the 1st to 2nd centuries CE (well, the pottery shards inside were), and one camouflaged shelter for up to 6 persons, which actually seems to have to do with hiding from the Romans in the revolt. We can safely ignore the latter for the purpose of whether something existed in 4 BCE, and the former is at most tenuous, when the contention is actually that Nazareth only appeared as a colony somewhere between the 1st and 2nd centuries. It's a bit like finding a house dated to the 17'th to 18'th centuries in Plymouth, Massachusetts and concluding that it indicates there was a city there in 1596. That's about the same time scales from the Nazareth argument shifted by 17 centuries, for analogy sake.

It gets often mis-cited as "Dr Alexandre showed it was inhabited before 67 CE", but that's not what's claimed. 'Dated to the 1st to 2nd centuries CE' doesn't say 'before 67 CE'. The only place 67 CE is mentioned is for that hideout. And even 'before 67 CE' still wouldn't mean 'before 4 BCE'. The two are almost a century apart. And in fact the dating leaves room for the two to be up to two centuries apart.

And not only there isn't evidence to show that there was much there, but there are good reasons to doubt that there was.

The nearby tombs are one, but the lack of water is another. The only source of water, for example, is what's been built into 'Mary's Well', and it's very low in the summer. It in fact turns into a trickle that people queue all night to fill some pots just to have something to drink. Any nearby farms or shepherds would also essentially draw from the same water layer, so you could either have a bunch of goats/sheep/whatever in the area or a bunch of people. The total for both together is dictated by that total water source.

That nearby farm is a problem, rather than the confirmation of the settlement. It's one extra place to share that little water with, if it had any animals.

As would any other settlements in the range of the same aquifer, for that matter. You can place a bunch of people there, or you can place them somewhere saner, but as long as their water source is the same, you have a total number that can live in the area. It's a situation where it's unclear at best if those total people were in Nazareth, of all places.

But at any rate, it's not clear at all whether there was actually a village there, or just basically an isolated farm and a cemetery, and the couple of houses for the workers at both. And again, it's a little stretch to use a dating that says 1st-2nd century CE to mean it was actually a village in the 1st century BCE.

And at any rate, the city from Matthew and Luke is right out. Short of an aqueduct -- and I'm not aware of anyone finding one there -- there just wasn't enough water in the summer for one, let alone for the farms and villages that would support the city. Plus there isn't much room for one.

 

[HansMustermann]

Also, since you kept asking for someone to argue a specific flavour of MJ as more believable, well, as I was saying, I don't even subscribe to it much (other than as a possibility that hasn't been actually excluded, i.e., a hole in all those arguments that oh, no, I should believe Jesus is real, because supposedly someone proved it), but being the nice and helpful kinda guy, here's Richard Carrier talking about it:

 

[davefoc]

I would like to think that this discussion on Nazareth is going to lead to some kind of a consensus amongst the participants (but I doubt it will, I expect both sides to be so fully invested in the views they held before this thread that a consensus won't be possible regardless of the evidence and arguments put forth).

Putting aside whether the Nazareth was inhabited near the time of the birth of an hypothetical HJ, which view of the possibility of an HJ would the non-existence of a habitable first century Nazareth support?

It seems like it cuts both ways:
1. There was no HJ and the gospel writers just made up the town of Nazareth to flesh out the details of the fictional character.
2. There was an HJ and the gospel writers carried a real historical detail into their stories. There was a relationship between Jesus and the world Nazareth, the gospel writers just didn't know what it was and they guessed wrong that Nazareth was the name of a town. It is conceivable that the original gospel writers didn't intend for Nazareth to represent the name of a town and it was only because of later copyists and/or interpolaters that Nazareth came to be interpreted as the name of a town.

 

[Darat]

I would like to think that this discussion on Nazareth is going to lead to some kind of a consensus amongst the participants (but I doubt it will, I expect both sides to be so fully invested in the views they held before this thread that a consensus won't be possible regardless of the evidence and arguments put forth).

Putting aside whether the Nazareth was inhabited near the time of the birth of an hypothetical HJ, which view of the possibility of an HJ would the non-existence of a habitable first century Nazareth support?

It seems like it cuts both ways:
1. There was no HJ and the gospel writers just made up the town of Nazareth to flesh out the details of the fictional character.
2. There was an HJ and the gospel writers carried a real historical detail into their stories. There was a relationship between Jesus and the world Nazareth, the gospel writers just didn't know what it was and they guessed wrong that Nazareth was the name of a town. It is conceivable that the original gospel writers didn't intend for Nazareth to represent the name of a town and it was only because of later copyists and/or interpolaters that Nazareth came to be interpreted as the name of a town.

Since we don't know wouldn't Ockham's razor suggest we go with the option with less entities i.e. your example 1?

Also assuming they simply made up a place for the character to be associated with fits with the evidence we already have i.e. that "they" did make lots of stuff up about the character.

 

[dafydd]

The first of those links mentions the work of two actual archaeologists, but it also supports the idea Nazareth was inhabited in the early First Century, so I have no idea why you included it.

I have no axe to grind in this thread, they were just some sites that I found. I regard Jesus as a mythical figure so the archeology of Nazareth does not interest me.

 

[TimONeill2]

So thus far, with this argument you have a "may". And even with the translation of "brethren in the Lord", the grammatical difference need still not mean that the genitive construction is literal: e.g., in English "brothers in the Lord" and "brothers of the Lord" both exist, but neither denotes a blood relation. I also note that Paul uses αδελφος nearly always in the figurative sense (OK, there's little if no need in his letters to use it in the literal sense), and moreover, calls everyone and their dog, as long as they're Christian, an αδελφος.

But your choice of words "noted ... mainly" suggests that you have more evidence. I'd say, bring it on!

As I've mentioned already, the phrase used in Galatians 1:19 and 1Cor 9:5 is used in the context of mentions of other believers. So while many or all of the other uses of αδελφος seem to be a figurative use meaning "fellow believer/believers", these "brothers" are being presented as distinct from other believers in some way - as a known sub-category of believer.

This is why both Doherty and Carrier have gone to some lengths to try to argue that these "ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ κυρίου" are some kind of "initiatory sub-grade" or some other distinct group within the early Jesus sect. The problem here is that this is all pure supposition - there is zero evidence to support this idea and it is conjured up purely out of an ad hoc need to explain who these "brothers" were while avoiding the idea that they were actually Jesus' siblings. Because the second the Mythicists do that, the game is up.

So we are confronted by two possible alternatives. One is this "initiatory sub-grade" idea, which is supported by nothing. And the other is the siblings of Jesus idea, which is supported in some way by almost every strand of Christian tradition we have as well as by Josephus' attestation that Jesus had a brother called James in Antiquities XX.

So, pure ad hoc supposition versus a position supported by multiple strands of evidence. It's not hard to see which an objective analyst would plump for.

 

[HansMustermann]

Actually, what I'm saying is that the connection to even the word Nazareth is hard to support at all.

As I was saying, Mark doesn't actually say "Jesus the from Nazareth", which is sounding funny in English, but I'm deliberately translating word-for-word how he'd say it in Greek, and how it's used all over the place for everyone else. Mark says all over the place "the Nazarene", which is actually used for stuff like "the Baptist" or "the Mother Of John" and so on, and even random people talking about Jesus talk about "that Nazarene". Apparently everyone in Mark and even Matthew who uses those constructs, are supposed to drop into "the Nazarene" as a place of origin, although for everyone else it's used differently. Not only the same author is supposed to use "the Nazarene" when for everyone else he uses the other construct, e.g., "from Arimathea", but even the characters in his story, from common people to angels somehow just know to say "the Nazarene" when it's about Jesus, and ONLY about Jesus.

Plus, since the Peter denial scene was already introduced, you have to wonder why everyone would refer to Jesus as "the guy from Nazareth", if that's what it meant. Unless Jesus wore a T-Shirt that said "I'm from Nazareth" or had to mention it in every conversation, someone's place of origin is the least likely thing you'd know about them, AND the least likely you'd expect someone to know about them. In all my life I've heard people asked about by all sorts of characteristics, like, "do you know a tall blond guy?" or "does that architect guy work for you?" or "there was some guy with a Russian accent that said he worked for you", but asking stuff like "was a guy from Bielefeld here earlier?" is something that is actually very rare. Unless you're asking about a car route or to carpool or stuff, someone's EXACT place of origin is pretty much the least relevant thing you could ask about. It's not clear at all why, if Nazarene is a place of origin designation, anyone would start with "were you here with that Nazarene?"

And sure enough, they don't do that with anyone else.

Matthew is the first that introduces Nazareth, as a fulfilment of a prophecy that Jesus would be called "the Nazoraios", whatever that means. (And actually we do have one document where they translated "nazirite", i.e., holy man dedicated to God, as "nazoraios", but let's say we still don't know if Matthew meant that.) But even he forgets it later, and just says "Jesus the from Nazareth" when he wants to refer to him that way.

But the thing about Matthew is: whatever "nazoraios" meant, it's

A) pretty unbelievable that any prophecy (read: fragment of a sentence that they twist into being some kind of prophecy, schizophrenia style) would actually refer to a tiny and largely unknown village in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the village isn't named in the OT or any other sources, religious or not. And there is no reason for anyone to fabricate a claim to greatness as a prophecy, about some poor peasants in the middle of nowhere. Bethesda for example was hyped up as the city of David, not just to give some peasants a claim to greatness. It's a way to stake a claim for David. There's no reason anyone would do that for Nazareth.

I.e., it must have meant something else. Whatever "prophecy" Matthew found that someone will be called a "nazoraios", and that he's trying to fulfil by having Jesus live in Nazareth, must be about something else. It might be that someone will be called a "nazirite", or as others proposed "the truth", or "the branch", or really, whatever, but not nail down a messianic claim for some peasants of no importance to anyone else.

2. We can be pretty sure that if someone uses such a lame lexical trick to fulfil a requirement, it means they don't really qualify otherwise. I mean, otherwise they'd just say why they qualify.

It's like having a job ad for a programmer, and someone came and said that they qualify because they lived in the city of Programa (apparently a real city in Serbia,) you could be pretty sure they're not qualified to be a programmer. Otherwise they'd tell you the more relevant credentials.

Same here, really. Matthew is trying to sell you the idea that Jesus fulfiled a whole bunch of prophecies, the best he can. E.g., in another place he has Mary and Joseph leg it to Egypt and back to fulfil a supposed "prophecy" that God's son would come from Egypt, or he invents a massacre of babies to support another "prophecy". And really, if you believe that those phrases pulled out of context are actual prophecies, then the reason Matthew tries to sell you as those being fulfiled, fits fair and square. E.g., if there was a prophecy that Jesus would come from Egypt, then, sure, he has him actually coming from Egypt. Only for "nazoraios", whatever that meant to his readers, he has to do a stupid pun based on a village name to have any claim that it fits.

So whatever "nazoraios" meant, we can be pretty sure that Jesus didn't qualify as one, or Matthew would have better things to cite. That takes care of such silly arguments as "but it can't have meant nazirite, because he drank wine". Sure, but if he qualified, Matthew wouldn't use a pun instead.

3. Here comes the induction. Just about any other claim about Jesus fulfilling prophecies is made up. There was no actual massacre of innocents. (In fact the whole idea that a Jew would just try to spite God as the next best thing, if he can't get to pay homage to the Messiah, is more like the strawman version of Judaism that some Xians were so willing to believe, than what a Jew would do after he's just been presented as pious and willing to acknowledge the messiah.) There is no reason to believe that Joseph and Mary legged it to Egypt to avoid a king that wasn't looking for them, and definitely not in Nazareth. There is no reason to believe that Jesus actually rode into town on two donkeys at the same time like a circus performer. Etc.

And in all those cases there is no evidence that he was working from a real event and trying it to rationalize it as fulfilment, but the other way around. E.g., he's not taking a real massacre of babies and finding a passage from the OT that it fulfils, he's working the other way around, from a passage he found to some tall story he can claim fulfilled it.

I see no reason to believe that oh, no, just this one is really based on any real connection with Nazareth. Unless there actually is a good reason to support that exception, that is. Otherwise it's just special pleading.

At any rate, it's one fulfilment in a long list of stuff that is made up by Matthew or his sources, and he has just as good a motive for it as for any others.

4. It fails Occam's Razor.

See, the "he made it up" is always the most Occam conform explanation, if there is no corroborating evidence that supports the actual claim. If my brother Max were to say that he knows from a good source that there was actually a dragon found 50 years ago, the version where he is right actually needs a lot more entities. You need not just the dragon, but all those people involved in transmitting that information accurately. If the story had to go through Tom, who was an eyewitness, and who told it to Dick, who told it to Harry, who finally told it to Max, all those are assumed entities and events that the "Max is right" hypothesis needs. Taking it as just something made up, gets rid of anywhere between one and all of them.

Now if there were corroborating evidence of any of that, or of the dragon claim itself, then "Max made it up" no longer can explain that, and we'd look for the next simplest explanation. E.g., if there were an article published in 1960 that claimed to show dragon bones, sure, Max wasn't even born then, so he couldn't have made it up.

In this case, what we have is a case where certain entities and assumptions are the same. Matthew still makes that claim to support a title for Jesus either way. Whether Jesus was actually from Nazareth or not, Matthew's claim is the same and works the same. Adding an assumption that Jesus actually did live in Nazareth, is just an extra element, and the people involved in transmitting that information faithfully are even more extra elements. Unless there is some other evidence for it, both explain the same thing, and in fact with the exact same explanation, so those extra elements don't even make a difference. They're just extra irrelevant fluff. There is no reason to go for the more complicated version.

5. None of the authors show that they have the faintest clue about Nazareth.

Matthew calls it a city, as does the possible interpolation in Mark. As I just said, there is neither the room, nor the water supply for anything even near city size there. Luke gives it a synagogue, although in a city of AT MOST 50 families of very modest means, all clustered within 4 acres, it's unlikely they'd even have anyone who can read at that synagogue. Luke has the town get so enraged at Jesus presuming to preach there, that they threaten to chuck him off a nearby cliff. Actually the nearest cliff is miles away, and uphill, so it's kinda funny to imagine everyone in town huffing and puffing as they leg it several miles with Jesus in tow to the nearest cliff. Why not just stone him right there, if they're so annoyed?

And so on. It doesn't really say that those guys actually had witnesses from Nazareth, or which even knew jack about Nazareth. There is just no reason to assume they knew anything about it, when they get it wrong.

6. And it's not hard to see why they'd be in the dark. It's that lack of witnesses again.

Now usually I'm asked to believe that oh, no, THAT is something they couldn't make up, because there were witnesses from Jesus's home town, dude. But really, it's the same guys who didn't mind making up a physically impossible solar eclipse that would be seen by more people, or a zombie invasion in a MAJOR ancient metropolis like Jerusalem. If obviously there were not enough witnesses from Jerusalem to correct them about that, what are the odds that they'd even need to deal with anyone from Nazareth at all?

Well, not very high. Out of at most 50 families, for a start well over half the adults alive to witness Jesus in the nonexistent synagogue, would be already dead even in Mark's time. Even more in Matthew's time. They'd be past the peak of the mortality curve at the time in the ancient Roman empire.

Second, unlike the people from Jerusalem, they wouldn't have been driven out of their homes and scattered all over the world yet. There wouldn't be much of a reason for a dirt-poor peasant from Galilee to start travelling all over the Greek towns just to correct other people about whether Jesus of Nazareth was taken as a prophet at home too.

7. For that matter, it's exactly the kind of thing you'd want to invent, if you WERE concerned about possible witnesses. Some guy who's been living for 30 years in Jerusalem would be harder to just sneak by than some village nobody heard about, and couldn't even find on a map even if they wanted to check. (No, seriously, we don't have any map from that time that shows Nazareth.) Not that anyone bothered to check easier stuff, mind you.

Etc.

So basically I'd say we don't really know if there was a connection between the historical Jesus and anything called "Nazareth", much less the village. He was associated with a title called "Nazarene" which is a different thing.

That said, we don't really need a dichotomy there. The town's status of real or made up, and the status of Jesus as real or made up, are orthogonal. There are actually 4 combinations, even without counting fine shades of each. There is no need for both to be real or both to be false. One can also fit a real place to a fictive character (e.g., several real places are mentioned in War And Peace in relation to Count Bezukhov), or you can retrofit a fictive place to a real (if embellished) character (e.g., if there actually was a historical Hercules, who was the forefather of all Dorians, he probably wouldn't have done his stuff in Greece.)

So yeah, not only it cuts both ways, it slices and dices at least four ways

 

[TimONeill2]

Seriously, the appeal to authority is:

1. Always a fallacy in formal logic. It doesn't matter who some guy is, only if his arguments are sound.

2. An allowable shortcut in informal logic, as a fairly weak induction argument, and never actually meaning even there that an argument is right or wrong. It just means you can take a shortcut for whether you want to believe it or not, or who you want to believe, but it's basically not saying much else and isn't really binding for anyone else.

I merely asked if anyone had any studies by archaeologists who backed up your claim. "dafydd" replied by posting some links, none of which had any references to any archaeologists who support what you claimed, so I noted as much. He's since explained that he was simply posting some links on the subject and wasn't really responding directly to my request.

Of course, I knew that there are no archaeological studies that back up your claim, because I've been over all this before, many, many times. Your claim is based on the arguments of the piano teacher from Oregon I mentioned. My point was that, yet again, here we have people (ie you) confidently stating things as fact ("It seems to be a colony which only appeared after the destruction of Jerusalem. ") which when we examine them are only held by some fringe amateur with an axe to grind and are rejected by the experts in the field. A pattern seems to be emerging here.

Of course, that in itself doesn't mean the piano teacher from Oregon or the unemployed library assistant from New York or the failed Canadian science fiction writer are automatically wrong. So let's see whether the piano teacher's armchair critiques of the experts stand up to scrutiny.

To begin with, scepticism about the existence of Nazareth isn't new. What's interesting though is how it has been forced to shrink and mutate as more and more evidence has come to light. For example, anyone trying to argue Nazareth didn't exist used to be able to say there was no reference to the place at all outside of the gospels and later Christian material. Then in 1962 an inscription mentioning Nazareth as one of the places former priestly families were settled after the destruction of the Temple was found in Caesarea Maritima, dating to about 135 AD. So then the claim became that there was no sign of inhabitants on the site dating to the First Century AD. Except excavations of kokhim tombs over several decades (by B. Bagatti, N. Feig and Z. Yavor) brought the number of these tombs to over 24 and firmly established their date to the second half of the First Century.

So people like the piano teacher then had to resort to claiming there was no evidence of any habitation in the early First Century (as though a population large enough to leave behind over 20 expensive rock-hewn tombs sprang from nothing overnight). Then the terraces, wine press and two towers with lots of Early Roman and Herodian pottery got excavated. "Okay" said the piano teacher "but that's just one farm." Then in 2009 a First Century house with lots of Early Roman pottery turns up. "Okay" says the piano teacher, "That's just a farm and a house and pottery from the relevant period, where's everything else?"

Oddly, he also makes the point that the centre of the later village of Nazareth lies under the modern city and has never been excavated. Strangely, its doesn't seem to occur to him that the this means it's most likely "the rest" lies with the later village that he admits existed and admits has never been excavated. He's had to back down from a slew of earlier claims in the face of new finds and is now resorting to claims about the hydrology of the areas that (i) makes no sense given his own admission that there was a later, larger village there and (ii) is undermined by the existence of several springs well known to archaeologists who have actually examined the site rather than discerning things from an armchair in Oregon.

In reviewing the piano teacher's book, Dr Ken Dark of the University of Reading, the Director of the Nazareth Archaeological Project and an actual archaeologist (who may or may not be able to play the piano) concluded:

"[T]his is not a well-informed study and ignores much evidence and important published work of direct evidence. The basic premise is faulty and Salm's reasoning is often weak and shaped by his preconceptions. Overall, his central argument is archaeologically unsupportable." (Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, (26) 2008, p.145)

Even given the very small area that has been excavated in Nazareth so far, anyone trying to claim no village existed there have had to retreat constantly to increasingly smaller and more specific claims. A full archaeological survey of the whole area with extensive excavations would be required to settle the question beyond the most unreasonable doubt (which is unlikely to happen, given there is a large modern city in the way), but with over 20 upper class tombs, clear evidence of cultivation from the right period and clear evidence of domestic habitation, no actual archaeologist who has worked in the area has any doubt it was continuously inhabited from the Hellenistic Period onward. And they haven't decided that on a whim.

 

[IanS]

Fact? Go ahead and back that up. You can't even get Mark into the first century without accepting obvious Christian forgery. Pretty easy to do when you are Emperor Constantine's representative, ie Eusebius.

Please give evidence for your claims here.

According to Wikipedia, before the 4th cent. AD, all that is known of any gospels are just some fragments. It specifically says this -


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

Dating
Estimates for the dates when the canonical gospel accounts were written vary significantly; and the evidence for any of the dates is scanty. Because the earliest surviving complete copies of the gospels date to the 4th century and because only fragments and quotations exist before that, scholars use higher criticism to propose likely ranges of dates for the original gospel autographs. Scholars variously assess the majority (though not the consensus [21]) view as follows:

Mark: c. 68–73,[22] c. 65–70[23]
Matthew: c. 70–100.[22] c. 80–85.[23]
Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85,[22] c. 80–85[23]
John: c. 90–100,[23] c. 90–110,[24] The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.
Traditional Christian scholarship has generally preferred to assign earlier dates. Some historians interpret the end of the book of Acts as indicative, or at least suggestive, of its date; as Acts mentions neither the death of Paul, generally accepted as the author of many of the Epistles, who was later put to death by the Romans c. 65[citation needed], nor any other event post AD 62, notably the Neronian persecution of AD 64/5 that had such impact on the early church.[25] Acts is attributed to the author of the Gospel of Luke, which is believed to have been written before Acts, and therefore would shift the chronology of authorship back, putting Mark as early as the mid 50s. Here are the dates given in the modern NIV Study Bible:
Matthew: c. 50 to 70s
Mark: c. 50s to early 60s, or late 60s
Luke: c. 59 to 63, or 70s to 80s
John: c. 85 to near 100, or 50s to 70
Such early dates are not limited to conservative scholars. In Redating the New Testament John A. T. Robinson, a prominent liberal theologian and bishop, makes a case for composition dates before the fall of Jerusalem.


Presumably those “fragments” are not sufficient to piece together anything resembling complete and informative contents of any gospel. Otherwise there would be no point in describing them only as “fragments“.

However, even the fragments are not thought to be older than about 150-200CE. And afaik, earlier dates are guesses made by comparison with fragments of the Old Testament, rather than by any objective scientific dating ... in the following table, to take the first entry for example, the "Dates of Earliest Known Fragments" are the last dates given in brackets, eg 150-200CE for Gospel of Mathew, whilst the earlier date determined by scholars is 60-85CE, for example.


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

Book Dates determined by scholars Earliest Known Fragment
Gospel of Matthew 60-85 CE[8] ��104 (150–200 CE)
Gospel of Mark 60-70 CE ��88 (350 CE)
Gospel of Luke 60-90 CE ��4, ��75 (175–250 CE)
Gospel of John 80-95 CE ��52 (125–160 CE)
Acts 60-90 CE ��29, ��45, ��48, ��53, ��91 (250 CE)
Romans 57–58 CE ��46 (late 2nd century or
3rd century CE)
Corinthians 57 CE ��46 (late 2nd century or
3rd century CE)
Galatians 45-55 CE ��46 (late 2nd century or
3rd century CE)
Ephesians 65 CE ��46 (late 2nd century or
3rd century CE)
Philippians 57–62 CE ��46 (late 2nd century or
3rd century CE)
Colossians 60 CE +[citation needed] ��46 (late 2nd century or
3rd century CE)
1 Thessalonians 50 CE[citation needed] ��46 (late 2nd century or
3rd century CE)
2 Thessalonians 50 CE[citation needed] ��92 (300 CE)
Timothy 60-100 CE[citation needed] Codex Sinaiticus (350 CE)
Titus 60-100 CE[citation needed] ��32 (200 CE)
Philemon 56 CE[citation needed] ��87 (3rd century CE)
Hebrews 80-90 CE[citation needed] ��46 (late 2nd century or
3rd century CE)
James 50-200 CE[citation needed] ��20, ��23 (early 3rd
century CE)
First Peter 60-96 CE[citation needed] ��72 (3rd/4th century CE)
Second Peter 60-130 CE[citation needed] ��72 (3rd/4th century CE)
Epistles of John 90-100 CE[citation needed] ��9, Uncial 0232, Codex Sinaiticus (3rd/4th century CE)
Jude 66-90 CE[citation needed] ��72 (3rd/4th century CE)
Revelation 68-100 CE[citation needed] ��98 (150–200 CE)​

 

[maximara]

Well, yeah, but that gets me back to the topic of the thread: what really counts as a historical Jesus? How much can a person differ from the character of a story, and still count as the historical version of that character? Was Lovecraft's mom the historical mad Arab?

E.g., ok, let's talk about Custer.

There was this Atari game called "Custer's Revenge" in which the player plays the role of a Custer that... runs around in a uniform without pants on, and with a raging erection, and does nothing more than rape native women. (Oh yeah, probably not safe for work to look it up.)

Taking the conceptual persons P1="Custer, the actual historical lieutenant colonel" and P2="Custer, the character of that unfortunate video game", can one really say with a straight face that P1 is the historical version of P2? And exactly what details of P1 would be found in P2?

This goes back to my John Frum reference: in essence we have two John Frums: the one the cult records and the one history records.

Cult record: a white US serviceman who appeared to the Elders on February 15, 1931.

History: illiterate native named Manehivi who caused trouble using the name John Frum in 1941 and was exiled from the island as a result (Worsley, Peter (1957) The Trumpet Shall Sound, pp. 153–9)

Furthermore in 1957 efforts to show that the white US serviceman John Frum didn't exist were met with total failure (Lal, Brij V.; Kate Fortune (2000) The Pacific Islands: an encyclopedia; University of Hawaii Press; ISBN: 978-0824822651; Pg 303).

The issue is other then name what connects these two John Frums?

If the canonal Gospels are remotely accurate why are there no contemporary records of the events?


As Remsburg pointed out over 100 years ago:

Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ's miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness and resurrection of the dead took place——when Christ himself rose from the dead and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not

Why is it the best the apologetics can come up with outside their own circle is questionable (Josephus) or desperate (Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, or everybody's favorite Thallus)? If the Gospel Jesus is historical why is there so little written about him outside the Christanity community?

 

[davefoc]

...


Why is it the best the apologetics can come up with outside their own circle is questionable (Josephus) or desperate (Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, or everybody's favorite Thallus)? If the Gospel Jesus is historical why is there so little written about him outside the Christanity community?

I don't know if I qualify as an apologist, but the normal answer is that the hypothetical HJ was not widely known in his own time. How many minor Jewish sect leaders were documented outside of the NT in first century Palestine?

As an aside, both sides involved in the Nazareth debate seem to have made reasonable points about the existence or non-existence of Nazareth in first century Palestine. As a less informed outsider to this debate, I am hoping that some sort of consensus can be reached on the issue, so I am hoping that this thread can be left to focus on that particular issue until either a consensus has been reached or an agreement to disagree has been reached.

 

[HansMustermann]

This goes back to my John Frum reference: in essence we have two John Frums: the one the cult records and the one history records.

Cult record: a white US serviceman who appeared to the Elders on February 15, 1931.

History: illiterate native named Manehivi who caused trouble using the name John Frum in 1941 and was exiled from the island as a result (Worsley, Peter (1957) The Trumpet Shall Sound, pp. 153–9)

Furthermore in 1957 efforts to show that the white US serviceman John Frum didn't exist were met with total failure (Lal, Brij V.; Kate Fortune (2000) The Pacific Islands: an encyclopedia; University of Hawaii Press; ISBN: 978-0824822651; Pg 303).

The issue is other then name what connects these two John Frums?

Pretty much. It was actually supposed to be yet another John Frum example, since I was answering to a message that in turn was an answer to yours.

 

[Craig B]

... As Remsburg pointed out over 100 years ago:

<citation not reproduced here>

Why is it the best the apologetics can come up with outside their own circle is questionable (Josephus) or desperate (Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, or everybody's favorite Thallus)? If the Gospel Jesus is historical why is there so little written about him outside the Christanity community?

Here are the words with which Remsberg ends his work The Christ. My view is much the same as his.

While all Freethinkers are agreed that the Christ of the New Testament is a myth they are not, as we have seen, and perhaps never will be, fully agreed as to the nature of this myth. Some believe that he is a historical myth; others that he is a pure myth. Some believe that Jesus, a real person, was the germ of this Christ whom subsequent generations gradually evolved; others contend that the man Jesus, as well as the Christ, is wholly a creation of the human imagination. After carefully weighing the evidence and arguments in support of each hypothesis the writer, while refraining from expressing a dogmatic affirmation regarding either, is compelled to accept the former as the more probable.

 

[HansMustermann]

@TimONeill2:
I'm not sure how making a complete strawman of what was actually claimed is going to help your case, since what he actually claimed (A) it's freely available online, both from him and those trying to refute him, and (B) is precisely that the evidence and statements regarding that case are being grossly mis-represented. So it seems to me like seeing yet another guy rush to mis-represent even what it's about, would just confirm his point.

No, Salm's argument wasn't as simple as going "yeah, they had a house and a farm, but what else?" but included precisely calling into question the dating of the supposed evidence.

E.g., the terraces are presented as proof that the village was there at the time, but they're essentially impossible to date. The stones wouldn't look any different if they had been from before the Assyrian invasion or from the Byzantine era, or anything in between. There's a certainty claimed about exactly when it's from, when actually there isn't ANY base for that dating whatsoever.

E.g., the pottery from that farm is mis-represented as "early to late Roman" or "helenistic", but actually the Israel Antiquities Authority dated those strictly to late Roman, i.e., 2nd to 4th century. Widening it as "early to late" is as misleading as saying that cars existed in the 2nd millennium CE. I mean, sure, the real dating does fall into the enlarged interval, but there is nothing that requires such a misleading widening the claimed interval backwards.

E.g., coins are often cited as evidence, but the IAA seems to know nothing and never claimed anything about coins there earlier than Byzantine coins.

E.g., about the tombs, the claim isn't that they suddenly appear in the second half of the second century, but that the TYPE of tomb didn't appear anywhere in the area until circa 50 CE and was used until the 5th century CE. So while maybe 24 tombs wouldn't appear over night, but they also didn't accumulate before that type of tomb was in use. Also, considering that some of those 24 tombs date from the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, what's left is actually remarkably few tombs for even that supposed village of up to 50 families. There is no real problem in explaining those few tombs accumulating in the 4 centuries it was in use there, without claiming they go all the way back to 4 BCE.

Also, I would add myself, I don't really see how, if those were luxury tombs for the RICH, they require a tiny village of up to 50 POOR families cramped in a small place with barely enough water (i.e., the last place that someone wealthy would want to live in), to explain. Because the latter is the only thing that has actually been supported in Nazareth. That's like trying to explain the pyramids at Giza by arguing it was the poor from a nearby village buried there. Not literally as preposterous as the pyramids, mind you, but you can't really have it both ways that it was both something for the rich AND actually belonging to some poor peasants in a tiny village that barely got enough water to even survive the summer.

Also, not that those would be the first or last things mis-represented by those peddling the "Nazareth Village". E.g., some time ago a bath-house was presented as definite evidence that there was a city there in the time of Jesus, but then independent dating actually put it in the crusades era, more than a millennium after the timing it was supposed to support. Now it turns out there is something older below it, but without knowing what or how old it is, it's a bit early to say what it does support.

Etc.

Mind you, sure, he could well be wrong. But that's not settled by grossly mis-representing the actual claims into a complete strawman.

ETA: also, since earlier you were citing the Israeli archaeologists as evidence, if there was earlier evidence of a settlement in that time in Nazareth, someone forgot to tell for example Dr Alexandre, who is responsible for most of the digging there. Because, again, the statement from the IAA about that house says it's the first such evidence. That's not some fringe piano teacher, that's exactly who you were citing as a proper authority. If that farm was somehow evidence of a settlement in Jesus's time, well, Alexandre never heard of it being such evidence. Which is perhaps not weird, since it's the same Alexandre who dated the pottery shards there to the 2nd to 4th centuries, rather to anything remotely resembling "Jesus's time."

 

[IanS]

I don't know if I qualify as an apologist, but the normal answer is that the hypothetical HJ was not widely known in his own time. How many minor Jewish sect leaders were documented outside of the NT in first century Palestine?

Dave, whilst it may be quite reasonable to say that Jesus was probably not widely known in his own lifetime, that's not in any sense evidence to help the HJ case, is it?

That is - it hardly helps the HJ case to say that although we don't have any such evidence, we probably should not expect it. That still leaves us without the evidence.

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

What counts as the Historical Jesus?

Same thing that counts as the historical Peter Rabbit, and just as relevant. When all of the miracles are stripped away from both, we have a man in one case and a rabbit in the other.

So what.

 

[IanS]

What counts as the Historical Jesus?

Same thing that counts as the historical Peter Rabbit, and just as relevant. When all of the miracles are stripped away from both, we have a man in one case and a rabbit in the other.

So what.

Sure. If you discard the miracles, then at best we are left with an ordinary man for whom others (at least) were in the habit of trying to deceive people by claiming all sorts of impossible miracles.

On the other hand if you believe in religious miracles, then that's not exactly scientifically credible any more, is it.

To me that does not sound like a credible basis on which to have built a worldwide religion. Though the faithful millions still seem to believe it nevertheless.

 

[HansMustermann]

Dave, whilst it may be quite reasonable to say that Jesus was probably not widely known in his own lifetime, that's not in any sense evidence to help the HJ case, is it?

That is - it hardly helps the HJ case to say that although we don't have any such evidence, we probably should not expect it. That still leaves us without the evidence.

While that is correct, it goes even deeper than that.

A recurring argument for the correctness of various pieces of the gospels is basically "they wouldn't have made that up". Why? Well, the reason vary, but an oft cited one is "because there were lots of witnesses, and they couldn't make it up." E.g., it's been not so long ago that the "prophet without honour" incident was presented as something that CLEARLY shows that there were plenty of witnesses from Nazareth, and the gospel authors had to placate those when they said Jesus did no miracles at home. (Never mind that they don't seem to need to placate the tens of thousands of witnesses from Jerusalem scattered all around the empire, who could tell them there was no zombie invasion.)

Or there's supposed to be a whole oral tradition, that no matter where you put a guy with ink, quill and inclination, he'd find all sorts of people relaying first hand accounts about stuff happening all over the place. You'd find someone (who told someone who told someone...) who saw Jesus legging it on water at the Sea Of Galilee. And someone who saw him feeding the multitudes in a completely different place. And someone who saw him riding two donkeys into Jerusalem. And so on. And not just his own apostles, who, after all, had reasons to not be exactly objective. Oh no, lots of independent eyewitness accounts.

And everywhere! You could drop a Mark in Rome or a John in Ephesus and so on, and they'd just have plenty of independent sources for Jesus, and plenty of hostile witnesses to check the mistakes.

More insidiously, there's the argument that you shouldn't doubt the existence of Jesus, because the contemporary people didn't. But that's fully irrelevant if those didn't know anything about a historical Jesus. It's only relevant that some people considered him real, or at least not worth arguing his non-existence, if they actually had information about that. Otherwise it's fully irrelevant what uninformed personal opinions they had on the topic. I.e., not only the gospel writers everywhere are supposed to find lots of information about Jesus, but every single rabbi, heretic, or pagan that argues against Jesus, is really needing access to those plenty of witnesses.

But wait a minute, that's a superstar Jesus. It's a Jesus that you practically can't turn a corner or show any interest in the religion or area, without having several people around who know about him.

Yet when it comes to other people who had good reasons to be interested in such a Jesus (e.g., Philo would have probably been interested to know that a messiah claimed to be exactly his version of the incarnated Logos), suddenly it's, nah, he was just a nobody that virtually nobody has heard about.

The two just can't be true at the same time. If Jesus was such a nobody that nobody except his few followers even noticed his existence, then all those arguments that (implicitly or explicitly) need lots and lots of witnesses have to be bunk.