What counts as a historical Jesus?

[SpuriusMaximus]

Here's one: historians back then sucked.

In a sense, they did, but here the time-warp is in the Gospels, not in any serious historians.

In Mark chapter 6 for example, King Herod Antipas's reason for beheading John The Baptist is that King Herod Antipas had divorced his old wife and married Herodias, his brother's widow, and apparently John denounced that as incest. So while the king wasn't apparently that fussed, Herodias was, and she gets her daughter to ask for John The Baptist's head.

While the historicity of the event as described in the gospels may be questionable (especially the ridiculous "oops, I promised I'd fulfill a wish, and now that she wishes my best buddy dead I can't possibly refuse" angle), it nevertheless means that John The Baptist couldn't have died until after Herod married Herodias, the widow of Herod Philip I. Which couldn't happen before 34 CE, when Herod Philip I died. She wouldn't be his widow otherwise, you know?

And at that not immediately. The event is set on one of Herod's birthdays, so let's say the first birthday after that marriage. We don't actually know Herod Antipas's birthday AFAIK, but that would still add some months.

Jesus starts his ministry around a passover, and ends it on another passover, so even taking the shortest one in the synoptics, it's on the passover after that birthday. Basically unless Herod Philip I's death, Herod Antipas's marriage, Herod Antipas's birthday, and the execution are all clustered in January and February of 34 CE. (Possibly March too.) Jesus starts his ministry in 35 CE and ends it with his crucifixion in 36 CE, right before Pilate is recalled.

... but strangely enough, that's a year or two after Paul had converted to the religion of the crucified and risen Jesus

The time warp isn't a problem of ancient historians, but an internal time-warp that the gospel writers created. And, yeah, I guess you can say they sucked, but no sane person called them historians

 

[AlaskaBushPilot]

TimOneill2 -

You said that you would provide backing for dating GMark in the first century. I'm all ears, beginning with the strongest evidence you have on that.

Genuinely interested.

 

[maximara]

I didn't mean to dispute that your definition of what the Christ Myth theory was right or that it wasn't supported by others.

My point was that with your definition everybody participating in this thread believes that the Christ Myth theory is correct. So there wouldn't be much to debate if that was the issue. I think, using your terminology, the issue in this thread is which Christ Myth view is correct. My cut at the positions of the people taking part in this thread:
1. It is probable to certain that an HJ existed.
2. It is more likely than not that an HJ existed but it is plausible he didn't.
3. The data regarding an HJ is too unreliable to justify any particular judgment as to whether he existed or not
4. It is more likely than not than an HJ didn't exist but it is plausible that he did.

Compare this to John Remsburg's 1909 list:

"The conceptions regarding the nature and character of Christ, and the value of the Christian Scriptures as historical evidence, are many, chief of which are the following

1. Orthodox Christians believe that Christ is a historical character, supernatural and divine; and that the New Testament narratives, which purport to give a record of his life and teachings, contain nothing but infallible truth.

2. Conservative Rationalists, like Renan, and the Unitarians, believe that Jesus of Nazareth is a historical character and that these narratives, eliminating the supernatural elements, which they regard as myths, give a fairly authentic account of his life.

3. Many radical Freethinkers believe that Christ is a myth, of which Jesus of Nazareth is the basis, but that these narratives are so legendary and contradictory as to be almost if not wholly, unworthy of credit.
4. Other Freethinkers believe that Jesus Christ is a pure myth—that he never had an existence, except as a Messianic idea, or an imaginary solar deity."


Options two and three assume the Gospel Jesus is a historical myth but building on the works of David Strauss and John Fiske, here is how Remsburg defined historical myths:

"a real event colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the human and divine, the natural and the supernatural. The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false. A large portion of ancient history, including the Biblical narratives, is historical myth. The earliest records of all nations and of all religions are more or less mythical."


Even if we accept the Gospel Jesus as a historical myth we still have the issue of where on the huge spectrum Strauss, Fiske, and Remsburg provides us with do the Gospels accounts fall. This spectrum can be broken into three parts:

1. Jesus ala King Arthur: Jesus existed but the Gospel stories themselves is no more historical then Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. The Gospels don't even confirm that he lived in the 1st century or any of Jesus' actual actions. His name may have not even been Jesus.

2. Jesus ala Robin Hood: Jesus existed but the Gospels Jesus is a composite character of which the Historical Jesus is a only a part. The Gospels do not record the life of any one man but rather only a general view of the Historical Jesus with the lives of other would be messiahs used to fill the gaps.

3. Jesus ala George Armstrong Custer: Jesus existed and the Gospels have the general historical details correct. As with Custer fantastic and factually inaccurate exploits have been added.

That is where we are with a historical Jesus but only with option three do the Gospels do us any good.

 

[maximara]

Going back to the topic just what do we mean by the term "Historical Jesus"? That a man similar to Jesus actually lived in the way King Arthur or Robin Hood did? Or is it a little more on the lines of other major character of history? Just what do we mean with the term?

 

[maximara]

I didn't mean to dispute that your definition of what the Christ Myth theory was right or that it wasn't supported by others.

My point was that with your definition everybody participating in this thread believes that the Christ Myth theory is correct. So there wouldn't be much to debate if that was the issue. I think, using your terminology, the issue in this thread is which Christ Myth view is correct. My cut at the positions of the people taking part in this thread:
1. It is probable to certain that an HJ existed.
2. It is more likely than not that an HJ existed but it is plausible he didn't.
3. The data regarding an HJ is too unreliable to justify any particular judgment as to whether he existed or not
4. It is more likely than not than an HJ didn't exist but it is plausible that he did.

Compare this to John Remsburg's 1909 list:

"The conceptions regarding the nature and character of Christ, and the value of the Christian Scriptures as historical evidence, are many, chief of which are the following

1. Orthodox Christians believe that Christ is a historical character, supernatural and divine; and that the New Testament narratives, which purport to give a record of his life and teachings, contain nothing but infallible truth.

2. Conservative Rationalists, like Renan, and the Unitarians, believe that Jesus of Nazareth is a historical character and that these narratives, eliminating the supernatural elements, which they regard as myths, give a fairly authentic account of his life.

3. Many radical Freethinkers believe that Christ is a myth, of which Jesus of Nazareth is the basis, but that these narratives are so legendary and contradictory as to be almost if not wholly, unworthy of credit.
4. Other Freethinkers believe that Jesus Christ is a pure myth—that he never had an existence, except as a Messianic idea, or an imaginary solar deity."


Options two and three assume the Gospel Jesus is a historical myth but building on the works of David Strauss and John Fiske, here is how Remsburg defined historical myths:

"a real event colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the human and divine, the natural and the supernatural. The event may be but slightly colored and the narrative essentially true, or it may be distorted and numberless legends attached until but a small residuum of truth remains and the narrative is essentially false. A large portion of ancient history, including the Biblical narratives, is historical myth. The earliest records of all nations and of all religions are more or less mythical."


Even if we accept the Gospel Jesus as a historical myth we still have the issue of where on the huge spectrum Strauss, Fiske, and Remsburg provides us with. This spectrum can be broken into three parts:

1. Jesus ala King Arthur: Jesus existed but the Gospel stories themselves is no more historical then Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. The Gospels don't even confirm that he lived in the 1st century or any of Jesus' actual actions. His name may have not even been Jesus.

2. Jesus ala Robin Hood: Jesus existed but the Gospels Jesus is a composite character of which the Historical Jesus is a only a part. The Gospels do not record the life of any one man but rather only a general view of the Historical Jesus with the lives of other would be messiahs used to fill the gaps.

3. Jesus ala George Armstrong Custer: Jesus existed and the Gospels have the general historical details correct. As with Custer fantastic and factually inaccurate exploits have been added.

That is where we are with a historical Jesus but only with option three do the Gospels do us any good.

 

[llwyd]

Well, this is a pretty simple issue I would say. If we were talking about, say, ancient Babylonian history of which I know next to nothing, I would answer that I would go with the consensus opinion of the experts of the era. I don't really know much about Roman Palestine either, so I would here also rely on the consensus of leading experts, and if I understand it correctly they think it's pretty likely that there was an actual person on which the biblical accounts are based. In this occasion it also happens to support the common sense, Occamist view, that it's pretty sense making that there was such a charismatic preacher as it would be rather challenging to convince near contemporaries of a fictive charismatic preacher...

Anyway, there is a scarcity of non-biased sources and we can take it as quite self-evident that much of the biblical account is embellishment, exaggaration and pure invention.

 

[maximara]

Well, this is a pretty simple issue I would say. If we were talking about, say, ancient Babylonian history of which I know next to nothing, I would answer that I would go with the consensus opinion of the experts of the era. I don't really know much about Roman Palestine either, so I would here also rely on the consensus of leading experts, and if I understand it correctly they think it's pretty likely that there was an actual person on which the biblical accounts are based. In this occasion it also happens to support the common sense, Occamist view, that it's pretty sense making that there was such a charismatic preacher as it would be rather challenging to convince near contemporaries of a fictive charismatic preacher...

Anyway, there is a scarcity of non-biased sources and we can take it as quite self-evident that much of the biblical account is embellishment, exaggaration and pure invention.

The problem is more experts on Babylonian history and Roman Palestine don't have a vested interest in preserving a predetermined status quo that has been presented as fact.

Steve Bitterman was fired from Southwestern Community College in 2007 for saying the story of Adam and Eve as a myth. This is the kind of clout those who want a certain determination of the historical status of the Bible in general and Jesus in particular still have.

 

[Belz...]

... but strangely enough, that's a year or two after Paul had converted to the religion of the crucified and risen Jesus

How do we know at what time Paul converted, already ? Do we have "reliable" sources on this ?

 

[Darat]

Well, this is a pretty simple issue I would say. If we were talking about, say, ancient Babylonian history of which I know next to nothing, I would answer that I would go with the consensus opinion of the experts of the era. I don't really know much about Roman Palestine either, so I would here also rely on the consensus of leading experts, and if I understand it correctly they think it's pretty likely that there was an actual person on which the biblical accounts are based. In this occasion it also happens to support the common sense, Occamist view, that it's pretty sense making that there was such a charismatic preacher as it would be rather challenging to convince near contemporaries of a fictive charismatic preacher...
Anyway, there is a scarcity of non-biased sources and we can take it as quite self-evident that much of the biblical account is embellishment, exaggaration and pure invention.

Yet the evidence we do have (about how religions are founded and start and that is pretty concrete evidence) indicates that the opposite is in fact true.

 

[TimONeill2]

An earlier would be messiah that was crucified. Knohl and Wise have suggested that such a earlier figure was the inspiration for Jesus' teachings

Knohl, Israel (Author), David Maisel (Translator) (2002) The Messiah before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls University of California Press

Yes they have "suggested" that. Few others are very convinced. I haven't read Wise, but even Knohl has to admit his thesis is highly speculative. Essentially it's based on his readings of several DSS texts, which he believes refer to a certain Menachem as the (unnamed) "Teacher of Righteousness". This speculation is rather undermined by the fact that radiocarbon dating of two of the texts in question give a date range that is before this Menachem lived (see Broshi, Magen & Eshel, Hanan, 'Radiocarbon dating and "The Messiah before Jesus"', Revue de Qumran 20, 2 (2001) 310-317). More recently Knohl has tried to use an inscription of part of an apocalyptic text to support his theory. Unfortunately a key word in the line he tries to use is missing, so he supplies what he thinks it says by reference to his theory. Then uses this to ... support his theory. Draw your own conclusions.

BTW, I always find it intriguing when people who reject widely accepted conclusions about Jesus (eg he existed) as "too speculative" happily embrace stuff like this when it suits their agendas.

In fact there is a bit of wonkiness regarding Paul and the Gospels Jesus that points to this. Paul converted somewhere between 31-36 CE. ("Paul, St" Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005) The Gospels Jesus started his ministry after John the Baptist was executed.

We know from Flavius Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews Book XVIII that John the Baptist was executed no earlier than the twentieth year of the reign of Tiberius or 34 CE (that is when Philip II, Herodias' original husband died)

Okay.

It is well known that John talks of three Passovers (John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55).

It's also well known that gJohn is the only gospel to do so - the others only mention one Passover. I'm not aware of anyone who takes gJohn as historical on this detail, apart from fundamentalist literalists.

We also know that Pontius Pilate was recalled to Rome in 36 CE. If the Gospels are reasonably accurate, Jesus could only have been crucified 36 CE.

Or if gJohn's three Passovers are not to be taken at face value, he could have been executed any time in 34, 35 or 36. That's after John's execution and while Pilate is Prefect and Caiaphus is High Priest.

Now you have another major problem.

Really?

As Saul, Paul is implied to have persecuted Christians ie followers of the crucified and risen Jesus for years.

He does? Where? I'm very familiar with all the passages in Paul's letters where he refers to this persecution and in none of them is there any such "implication". He doesn't imply any time scale in any of them. So you'd better back the statement above up with a citation or evidence or this imagined "problem" promptly disappears. Unless you can produce this, the only "wonkiness" is in your argument.

Over to you.

 

[llwyd]

Yet the evidence we do have (about how religions are founded and start and that is pretty concrete evidence) indicates that the opposite is in fact true.

I guess we don't really know about Buddha whether he even existed (it would be quite nice if he did!), but isn't Muhammed a historical figure, Ron Hubbard, the moron, sorry, person, who invented mormonism etc. Confucius I guess is supposed to have existed, Laotse I guess not. But we don't really have such a big body of examples, these are quite individual, specific occurrances, and I would argue that in this particular case the Occamist view would be that the simplest explanation is that someone of that name really did live and preach. The story is so specific and the distance in time so short that it would seem quite odd for people to get feverish and hysterical about a fictive, knowingly falsely created person. But in any case I would go with the academic expert opinion on this issue, not being an expert myself.

 

[TimONeill2]

There are various elements in the gospels which are there purely to distance him from anti-Roman sedition.

So we can toss the gospels in the trash because Jesus didn't really say any of that stuff?

You can urinate on your copy from a great height if you choose, it wouldn't bother me. But your question seems to be motivated by this "all or nothing" absolutism that I mentioned above - the oddly binary idea that if anything in the gospels are fanciful (as at least some of it clearly is), it should all be rejected as ahistorical. This doesn't follow at all.

Oddly, while trying to argue that this is actually a reasonable position, Hans makes some very strange references to L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith etc. How the fanciful elements in the stories of these historical person helps him is not exactly clear. We can agree that Joseph Smith didn't see any angels, but this doesn't mean he didn't live in Palmyra or that he didn't die in Carthage. This means that a Hans Munstermann of the future who rejected those ideas because the angel stories made him doubt the reliability of everything in the Mormon traditions about Smith would be simply wrong. Similarly, we know that L. Ron Hubbard was not a highly decorated commander of a corvette squadron in WWII, but this doesn't mean he didn't serve in the US Navy at all or that he didn't exist. This means that a Hans Munstermann of the future who rejected those ideas because the later fanciful embellishments made him doubt the reliability of everything in the Scientology traditions about Smith would be simply wrong.

It's interesting that many who subscribe to this "all or nothing" idea are former fundamentalist Christians. It seems a peculiarly absolutist way of thinking that dies hard.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, actually there's that. Paul's conversion, as well as the dating of his epistles, are one of those cases where the dates are just pushed as low as possible to seem more authoritative, and the intervals given are narrower than any historian would give on any other domain. A lot of it is also based on the novel that is Acts and on completely unsupported pious fictions, like his beheading by Nero.

So while that is a solution, it involves saying out loud that basically the whole dating of it is BS. I'm not convinced that most apologists would find that more palatable

That said, Paul himself does give us some margins for that. He says he fled Damascus under king Aretas. Well, that can't possibly have happened before 37 CE, which is the lowest supportable date for the town being given to king Aretas, nor after 40 CE, when king Aretas dies.

In fact for the beginning it couldn't have been earlier than March 37, when Caligula took the throne, since he got it in a peace settlement with Caligula. Though more realistically it wouldn't be on the very first day Caligula took the throne, or anything. It's also unlikely that it would be exactly before king Aretas died, since we see in other places that Paul is overly eager to take credit for the death of an opponent and claims HE sent that opponent to hell. I'd think if Aretas died right as Paul was running from Damascus, Paul would have beaten his own drum for that miracle.

Since Paul gives us the information that he first went and preached in Arabia for an unspecified amount of time, then returned to Damascus where he stayed 3 years. So even if his stint in Arabia was just a couple of days, that would give us an absolute upper date of 37 AD for his conversion. Though a more realistic date is something like 35-36 AD.

Let's take around the end of 36 AD for a conversion date (he preached just a few months in Arabia, but still, enough to be worth talking about that), so basically more or less right after the crucifixion.

The problem there though is that both Paul and Acts say that Paul actually spent some time persecuting Christians and was pretty infamous in 3 provinces. Not only he needs time to build up that reputation, but also Christianity needs to spread in those 3 provinces first.

We are told Jesus was nailed on Passover, which in 36 CE would be on the 29'th of March (by our Gregorian calender.) Add 40 days or so after the crucifixion, and the Christians don't even go public with their faith until mid-May. And if Acts is to be believed, it's not like they instantly send missionaries all over the place. In fact, at first they seem to just dick around in Jerusalem.

So anyway, for 36, we have basically half a year for Christianity to spread AND for Paul to build quite a reputation, in spite of the fact that he couldn't really operate overtly and had no jurisdiction anywhere. The same Pilate, who, we're told was pretty quick to kill at the slightest sign of sedition, wouldn't hesitate to behead Paul right there and then if Paul started taking the law in his own hands and executing people.

Things are starting to look a bit compressed there, you know?

Plus, it would be weird for Paul to call himself "one untimely born" (read: converted) if he basically had seen the risen Jesus around the same time the apostles did.

Well, at any rate, there are other things that Paul mentions and which serve to anchor the dates.

E.g., after his first trip to Jerusalem, he takes 14 years until his second one. (Galatians 2:1) Incidentally, that also tells us that Paul is still hallucinating Jesus, it wasn't a one-off affair. He says point blank that he went there in response to a revelation. (Galatians 2:2.) So, yeah, he might not be the most stable or reliable of sources.

It may not be apparent, but that 14 years is going to be a problem in a jiffy.

Because if he returned in 40 CE, then 40+14=54 CE for his second visit to Jerusalem. So, you know, his missionary journeys wouldn't even start until 54 CE.

BUT by the end of his ministry fate sees him tried by Gallio. Well, an inscription in Delphi mentions Gallio as proconsul, and the year given is the 26'th acclamation of Claudius. This time it's an official inscription from exactly that time, so we can have some confidence that it's not a year pulled out of the ass. Claudius received his 26'th and 27'th acclamations in the year 52 CE. (Originally they were only after victories or such, but by then the Senate was giving them willy-nilly to emperors, usually more than once a year.) In fact the 27'th is mentioned on an inscription from an aqueduct he dedicated on 1 August 52, so he must have gotten the 27'th a bit before that, and the 26'th, obviously, even earlier. We're talking the first half of 52 CE in any case, not December.

Proconsuls served for 1 year, very rarely for 2 years.

So Paul could only be tried by Gallio in 52 AD, let's say plus or minus 1 year, in case Gallio served two terms.

Paul is brought to Gallio about a year and a half after he arrived in Corinth, so if he went straight to Corinth from Jerusalem -- and everything in between didn't actually happen -- if he came to Jerusalem in 54 CE, he couldn't be possibly tried by Gallio earlier than 55-56 CE.

So we have a time-warp again. If Paul came back in 40 AD, he can't be tried by Gallio earlier than 55-56 CE, yet Gallio couldn't possibly try him outside of 51-53 CE.

Etc.

So basically, even if you squeeze events to solve the crucifixion-conversion time-warp, now you just created another time-warp.

The only solution for this time warp is to push Paul's conversion back and have him return from Damascus in 37 CE or thereabouts. But now we have the first time warp.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

It's also well known that gJohn is the only gospel to do so - the others only mention one Passover. I'm not aware of anyone who takes gJohn as historical on this detail, apart from fundamentalist literalists.

Actually even Mark has Jesus start his ministry after JTB's death, and his ministry is about a year even in the synoptics. So he still couldn't be crucified earlier than 35 CE even without John, and it would still need an incredibly clustered sequence of events even for that. A more probable distribution of events (and I actually mean as in probabilities) still has Jesus die in 36 CE even without John.

John actually makes it worse, because it would actually make Jesus's crucifixion outside of when Pilate was actually governor, or Caiaphas high priest.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

You can urinate on your copy from a great height if you choose, it wouldn't bother me. But your question seems to be motivated by this "all or nothing" absolutism that I mentioned above - the oddly binary idea that if anything in the gospels are fanciful (as at least some of it clearly is), it should all be rejected as ahistorical. This doesn't follow at all.

Except again, it's not all or nothing, and the probabilistic reasoning was explained to you. Just postulating the same strawman again won't make it true, you know?

Oddly, while trying to argue that this is actually a reasonable position, Hans makes some very strange references to L. Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith etc. How the fanciful elements in the stories of these historical person helps him is not exactly clear. We can agree that Joseph Smith didn't see any angels, but this doesn't mean he didn't live in Palmyra or that he didn't die in Carthage. This means that a Hans Munstermann of the future who rejected those ideas because the angel stories made him doubt the reliability of everything in the Mormon traditions about Smith would be simply wrong. Similarly, we know that L. Ron Hubbard was not a highly decorated commander of a corvette squadron in WWII, but this doesn't mean he didn't serve in the US Navy at all or that he didn't exist. This means that a Hans Munstermann of the future who rejected those ideas because the later fanciful embellishments made him doubt the reliability of everything in the Scientology traditions about Smith would be simply wrong.

Not really. Why we know where Joseph Smith lived is because we have external corroboration for it. If it were only supported by the fanciful tales he wrote, then, yes, there would be reasons to doubt it.

But basically that quote from Sagan applies again: "They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

Just because you can construct a bogus theoretical situation where it would be unreasonable to doubt something, doesn't mean that your stuff is equivalent because it's doubted too. Even as by-association fallacies go, that's incredibly weak.

It would be equally unreasonable, when you have as much good solid evidence about Jesus as we have about Joseph Smith. You can't make a bad source unreasonable to doubt, by just comparing it to something that... isn't actually similar at all. It's not the Book Of Mormon that we need to trust to know when Joseph Smith lived.

Edit: and again, it also fails to be an analogy because Jesus isn't the author of the book, but the character of the book. It's misleading to compare Jesus to an author, since that implies a historical necessity for him to exist. But we already have other authors for that. An Jesus is to the gospel writers, like the Elder Alma is for the Book Of Mormon, not like Joseph Smith is. And we know that such characters were invented all the time.

And again, I actually explained the induction reasoning behind it. If you have a problem with it, fine, let's hear it. But cherrypicking just some examples to try to make it look bad, is kinda lame, you know?

It's interesting that many who subscribe to this "all or nothing" idea are former fundamentalist Christians. It seems a peculiarly absolutist way of thinking that dies hard.

Ad-hominem circumstantial, hence fully irrelevant. Doubly so when actually ascribing hidden reasons to something that's your own strawman. One would think that if you really need to explain your own strawman, you should look at yourself. I don't think there's anything that someone's being an ex-fundie or not can do, when they're not the ones stating that position.

 

[TimONeill2]

The whole Nazareth issue as a weak one in any case. The now defunct Jesus police site while very pro Historical Jesus threw out the whole idea that Jesus was in any way connected with the town Nazareth.

And this now defunct site should be taken as authoritative because ... ?

From another point of view, there is a wealth of evidence that Nazareth did not even exist at the time of Jesus as it is described in the New Testament.

The way it is described in the NT is as a town where Jesus grew up and where his family lived. That's about it. gLuke also has a cliff somewhere nearby that Jesus was almost thrown off, but this isn't found anywhere in the other gospels.

It may have been a tiny spot where transient Arabs established tent cities or where people lived in "wretched caves", but it certainly wasn't a City that supported a sizable population and a synagogue"

Yes, well it seems this "now defunct website" was written by people who didn't have much of a grasp of the archaeology. Or any grasp of Greek. The word πόλις usually gets translated as "city", but the Greek word actually doesn't have the implications of size of the English. It simply means a town and that's about all the gospel writers probably knew about Nazareth. The gospels say nothing about any "sizable population", so your defunct website has simply imagined that. Nor does it say anything about a synagogue building. Synagogue buidlings were rare anywhere in the region in the early First Century and a "synagogue" was simply an assembly for prayer that could be held in any home or building - the word is simply a Greek word meaning "assembly", a direct translation of the Hebrew קהל. An assembly of this kind would be held in any Jewish community large enough to have a quorum of ten adult males.

So much for your "defunct website".

A careful reading of the Gospel of Mark indicates that Jesus’ hometown was Capernaunm not Nazareth.

Er, right. That would be a "careful reading" that managed to carefully overlook the bit just before Jesus visits Capernaum that reads "In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan" (Mark 1:9)

He notes “When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home…” (2:1).

Just before this we are told he "entered the home of Simon and Andrew" where he heals Simon's mother-in-law. He stays there until after sundown (Mark 1:32) and is then depicted getting up early the next morning and going off into pray, with Simon and the others then searching for him when they find him gone. So if this is his hometown, why is he being depicted staying at Simon's house as a guest? A pajama party? "It was reported he was at home" is a euphemism for "in the house". gMark depicts him leaving Nazareth and staying with Simon and Andrew in their home in Capernaum.

Given that Nazareth, if it existed at all, was too small to host a synagogue

Simply wrong - see above. Perhaps there's reason this website is defunct.

You will notice that TimONeill2 has been avoiding the whole John Frum example like the plague because he can't challenge it.

I notice you keep bringing Frum up, though it's unclear why. Yes, that's one example of what seems to be a wholesale invention of a supposedly historical figure. There are others, most of which have already been mentioned. So? What am I meant to be "avoiding" here exactly?

More later.

 

[TimONeill2]

So while that is a solution, it involves saying out loud that basically the whole dating of it is BS. I'm not convinced that most apologists would find that more palatable

If you spot any of these "apologists" posting to this thread, do feel free to let us know.

That said, Paul himself does give us some margins for that. He says he fled Damascus under king Aretas. Well, that can't possibly have happened before 37 CE, which is the lowest supportable date for the town being given to king Aretas, nor after 40 CE, when king Aretas dies.

Which means if Jesus was executed in 34, 35 or 36, Paul converts within a few years of his execution, at most. Which seems to fit what he says nicely. So your point would be .... ?

The problem there though is that both Paul and Acts say that Paul actually spent some time persecuting Christians

You're the second person to claim this and use it to build an alleged "problem" out of it. Perhaps you can back this up with some reference in Paul's writing to how long he spent persecuting the Jesus sect, because I've read those passages pretty carefully and I can't see this at all. I can't see it in Acts either.

Most of the rest of your "problems" are either in your imagination, depend on some highly subjective concepts ("quite a reputation" - how much of a reputation is that exactly?) and/or would only be a bother to a Biblical literalist.

Nothing we actually have in Paul's writings contradicts the idea that he converted within a few years of Jesus' execution. Which also fits with his report that he met Jesus' friend and his brother, throwing something of a spanner in the works for this whole "Jesus never existed" enterprise.

 

[llwyd]

Apart from the problems this poses for any position that wants to stand up to Occam's Razor, we simply have no objective reason to suppose the Jesus stories have their origin with a non-historical figure. There's no mention and not even the faintest hint of an early form of proto-Christianity that believed in a mythic, allegorical, fictional (let alone "fan-fic") or celestial Jesus. And if this is how the whole thing got started, there should be. That alone consigns the whole hypothesis to the level of purely speculative fantasy, not history.

There are reasons for people to entertain these hypotheses, of course, they just aren't objective ones. They emotional and ideological. This is why we have an overwhelming consensus of scholars of all kinds (including many non-Christian, Jewish and atheist ones) on one hand and a two or three mavericks with a gaggle of bloggers and self-published amateurs on the other, all of whom happen to be anti-religious atheists with a clear bias. Whenever we see that kind of mismatched scenario on other questions (climate change, evolution, Holocaust denial) it's wise to be highly sceptical about the guys with the agenda. No difference here.

This also. Sometimes this particular subject resembles 911 debates: "yeah, now Bazant would say that"... To my mind it's rational to go with the experts on any given subject in which you yourself are not an expert, and not with the cranks. Historical studies are not physics, unfortunately, but they have developed painstaking methods that do get results that can be challenged within the discipline. It's hard, slow work though and cannot be learned in 15 mins from an internet site, and cannot also be debunked in 15 mins based on one or two books or a few sites that you have read. It's maybe not fair, but that's how it goes. History is a tough old discipline.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Which means if Jesus was executed in 34, 35 or 36, Paul converts within a few years of his execution, at most. Which seems to fit what he says nicely. So your point would be .... ?

Considering that it's been already explained three times, and once even in direct answer to you, I'm not entirely sure what YOUR point is. That you can have an answer to an objection, while ignoring what the objection actually was? Or what? How does that even work?

Now if you have a solution to the time warps problem that harmonizing the gospels with Paul produce (and here's even an easy one: the gospels are making incompatible stuff up), I'm all ears. But just declaring that the point hasn't been made is kinda silly.

You're the second person to claim this and use it to build an alleged "problem" out of it. Perhaps you can back this up with some reference in Paul's writing to how long he spent persecuting the Jesus sect, because I've read those passages pretty carefully and I can't see this at all. I can't see it in Acts either.

Galatians 1:22-24:

22. was personally unknown by face to the churches of Judea that are in Christ.

23. They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”

24. And they praised God because of me.​

More than one church in Judaea would have heard of Paul's persecutions to actually thank the Lord when he converted. In fact even after he's been away for at least 3 years, he's still remembered enough for that. That doesn't happen overnight.

Not that the exactity of the time interval matters all that much, because you'll notice -- or you would if you've read what was already said -- that I didn't need more than a couple of MONTHS between Jesus's death and Paul's conversion to end up with a time-warp at one end or the other.

That or, I guess, having to admit that some gospel writers -- at the very least Luke who's taken to be the author of Acts too -- were making stuff up even about mundane stuff. Luke for example has no problem making up stuff about Paul's preaching in Corinth, or his appearance before Gallio, etc, none of which are particularly miraculous. And thus are not reliable sources.

Most of the rest of your "problems" are either in your imagination, depend on some highly subjective concepts ("quite a reputation" - how much of a reputation is that exactly?) and/or would only be a bother to a Biblical literalist.

Considering that so far you've just ignored the actual argument, how would you know if it's just in my imagination or not?

Nothing we actually have in Paul's writings contradicts the idea that he converted within a few years of Jesus' execution. Which also fits with his report that he met Jesus' friend and his brother, throwing something of a spanner in the works for this whole "Jesus never existed" enterprise.

Except for the little detail that nobody claimed that the problem exists strictly in Paul's writings. The point was about gospel accuracy, and how at least one or two non-miraculous details can't be true without contradicting Paul or creating some time-warps.

Of course, there is an easy way out in just saying that Mark's connecting Jesus to JTB and/or motive given for JTB's execution is BS, Matthew seems to know no better since he just copies the episode from Mark, Luke is full of crap too, and John's accuracy you just argued against yourself earlier. And/or Paul may be embellishing things a little too.

Which gets us back to the point: the gospel authors are anything but reliable sources.

As for the other points:

- since we're talking about discussing history, not religion, I'm not sure why you feel a need to throw around "literalist". What would a non-literalist version of history be like, anyway? Just making up what the sources really mean, like the non-literalist theologians did with religion?

- the ipse-dixitism about Paul, I'm not sure what that brings to the table, when the topic is the unreliability of the gospel authors, and the fact that if we take them as reliable (for the non-magical stuff), we end up with a time-warp or them talking about a different Jesus. I.e., it's an ad-absurdum. Even if I were to grant that Paul was talking about some guy called Jesus, if the gospel authors are nowhere near reliable sources for other attributes of Jesus, we essentially have a generic random Joe, not a historical version of the gospel Jesus.

- for that matter, I'm not sure why something boiling down to "Paul said so himself" would throw a spanner into anything. Victor Lustig said himself that he had the rights to sell the Eiffel Tower. Twice. Doesn't make it true just because he said it. Joseph Smith said himself that he actually met the angel Moroni and faithfully translated some ancient golden tablets. Doesn't make it true just because he said so himself. Etc.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

This also. Sometimes this particular subject resembles 911 debates: "yeah, now Bazant would say that"... To my mind it's rational to go with the experts on any given subject in which you yourself are not an expert, and not with the cranks. Historical studies are not physics, unfortunately, but they have developed painstaking methods that do get results that can be challenged within the discipline. It's hard, slow work though and cannot be learned in 15 mins from an internet site, and cannot also be debunked in 15 mins based on one or two books or a few sites that you have read. It's maybe not fair, but that's how it goes. History is a tough old discipline.

What seems even stranger to me is that invariably when such an argument is made, it doesn't come from someone with a Ph.D. in history. Almost invariably it's some guy telling you that

A) you should listen to the guys with a Ph.D. because you're unworthy of even trying to understand it, yet

B) that he as a random Joe can -- explicitly or often just implicitly -- decide which of the guys with Ph.D. degrees in ancient history are wrong, or even "cranks".

Because, see, unlike the popular mis-representation that has all experts in corner A and all the uninformed rabble in corner B, reality is a bit more mixed. In corner B you also have guys like Richard Carrier who does have a Ph.D. in ancient history, or Robert Price who does have a doctorate in theology and one in New Testament studies. (Plus was a minister. So, you know, between that and the degrees and professor position you can trust him to at least know what the book says.)

Something just doesn't square up for me between A and B. Either you do need to be a professor of bible studies to tell someone what's right or wrong, OR a Joe with no relevant degree can tell you which Ph.D. historian is wrong, but not really both.

Edit: and besides, wouldn't the exact same argument apply to Feng Shui, or Homeopathy, or Acupuncture, or Astrology, and so on? All of them have established their own methods, are old disciplines, take many years to study, and so on. And let's face it, you're not going to be an expert on Feng Shui or Acupuncture by just googling it for 15 minutes, either. If that's enough to grant a discipline a right to bypass logic and reverse the burden of proof, shouldn't the same reasoning apply to the others too?