What counts as a historical Jesus?

[Craig B]

Gosh I wish people actually read my posts:



Rumors are hearsay. Extensive documentation of historical events is not.

It seems to me like you're desperately trying to alter the meaning of hearsay so that the criticisms of historical Jesus studies are somehow negated. That doesn't sound like a good way to argue for the HJ theory.

Well if you are insinuating that I falsified the definition I reported, there is nothing more to be said.

 

[IanS]

Please take that up with the person who called Jesus that. I don't.

Oh I already did that, thank you.

But that post was just emphasising to you yet again why the Jesus case is shot through with more holes than the most “holy” Swiss cheese ever.

 

[IanS]

Well if you are insinuating that I falsified the definition I reported, there is nothing more to be said.

I think what Belz (and others) are pointing out to you is that you are clutching at vanishingly thin straws if you think you can negate the appallingly weak nature of the Jesus evidence by engaging in disputes about what any particular dictionary says about the nature and value of hearsay "evidence" (re the analogy that has been made here to a trial jury assessing the value of testimony coming from a chain of anonymous “hearsay“ sources on Jesus).

 

[Belz...]

Well if you are insinuating that I falsified the definition I reported, there is nothing more to be said.

Well one thing is certain, you did falsify what I was trying to say.

 

[Craig B]

Well one thing is certain, you did falsify what I was trying to say.

Did I indeed? And it's certain that I did, too, rather than merely disagree with it? I will try to find a way of troubling you no further, in that case.

 

[eight bits]

ddt

What we don't have is a single ostrakon with a Twitter-style message "Jesus just preached the meek shall inherit the earth. Deep!"

With our luck, it would say, "Mom said Jesus just preached the meek shall inherit the Earth."

 

[Slowvehicle]

Did I indeed? And it's certain that I did, too, rather than merely disagree with it? I will try to find a way of troubling you no further, in that case.

For me, at least, the problem is that you do not seem to grasp why hearsay testimony is accepted in only severely limited ways. The crux of the matter is the "cannot be adequately substantiated" verbage. When what we have of Jesus is that Paul is said to have said that James said Jesus was his brother, the possibility of substantiation is attenuated to homeopathic concentrations.

And it is all complicated by things that are simply not substantiated outside the bible (i.e., the "slaughter of the innocents"); obscured by the facts that the things Mark is said to have said about things to which he was not an eyewitness (half a century or more after the facts) contradict many of the things that Luke is said to have said about things to which he was not an eyewitness (half a century or more after the fact) and so on; and seasoned by the fact that the gospels are said to contain narratives about events to which no one was a witness (i.e., the Gesthemane soliloquy).

The Pimpernel himself is less illusive than the HJ...

 

[Belz...]

Did I indeed? And it's certain that I did, too, rather than merely disagree with it?

You didn't disagree, you implied that I said something that I didn't.

Seems like you've decided to take the Stone-style road of making this discussion personal.

 

[smartcooky]

Correction: no such record of him has survived to this day. There might have been at some point such a record, but we don't have it.

I accept that, but I'm not asking for an essay, I'm asking for a mere mention of his name.

There is nothing.

He is claimed by the NT to have been famous far and wide throughout the region; at least as well known as his contemporaries Herod, and Pilate, and much better known than other contemporaries such as Lysanius (Tetrarch of Abilene), Sergius Paulus (Governor of Cyprus), Erastus (City Treasurer of Corinth) and Gallio (Governor of Corinth). Of these last four, for example, plenty has been recorded in numerous sources outside of the NT, and much of this has survived to this day, but nothing, not one word about Jesus, not even a mention of his name in passing is to be found anywhere else in any contemporaneous document, papyrus scroll, stone tablet, temple wall, building fascia or pavement stone. Nothing!

 

[ddt]

ddt

What we don't have is a single ostrakon with a Twitter-style message "Jesus just preached the meek shall inherit the earth. Deep!"

With our luck, it would say, "Mom said Jesus just preached the meek shall inherit the Earth."

Which would give us James as well as a historical figure - I agree. Though it would raise interesting questions again: if James had to hear from Mary what Jesus preached, how does he later become leader of the church?

I hope Craig comes back to discuss the height of the branches I pick fruit from.

 

[maximara]

I think we need to attend to hearsay, nevertheless, in historical studies. What else is the written work of a historian who depends on anything other than his or her own experience as a source?

It certainly is NOT hearsay either in the layman or legal definition of the word.

I did a referral dump on the legal definition of hearsay in Post 3985 when Eight bits made his claim that "Hearsay is admissible in both the military and civilian systems, because it is often reliable." which I demonstrated via Federal Rules of Evidence Rule that that was not true.

The layman definition came up in Post 3999:

Hearsay: Information received from other people that cannot be adequately substantiated.

And that is a reasonable summation of the Federal Rules of Evidence Rule.

The cannot be adequately substantiated part is the key here.

Paul supposedly meet James brother of the Lord and yet he tells us next to nothing about Jesus the man. Paul had access to a potential eyewitness (perhaps two of them) and to put it bluntly blew it.

Then you come to the Gospels which are anonymous with a composition date of 70 -140 CE and an unknown Provenance (ie chain of custody) clear into the 4th century CE. And when you can check them against actual geography, social political reality, or known history they do a major fail.

Our best expert, Irenaeus, is babbling nonsense about fitting a 50+ year old Jesus into what is at best a 42 year long time period and saying Jesus was crucified no earlier then 42 CE even thought external records indicate this is impossible.

 

[IanS]

It certainly is NOT hearsay either in the layman or legal definition of the word.

I did a referral dump on the legal definition of hearsay in Post 3985 when Eight bits made his claim that "Hearsay is admissible in both the military and civilian systems, because it is often reliable." which I demonstrated via Federal Rules of Evidence Rule that that was not true.

The layman definition came up in Post 3999:

Hearsay: Information received from other people that cannot be adequately substantiated.

And that is a reasonable summation of the Federal Rules of Evidence Rule.

The cannot be adequately substantiated part is the key here.

Paul supposedly meet James brother of the Lord and yet he tells us next to nothing about Jesus the man. Paul had access to a potential eyewitness (perhaps two of them) and to put it bluntly blew it.

Then you come to the Gospels which are anonymous with a composition date of 70 -140 CE and an unknown Provenance (ie chain of custody) clear into the 4th century CE. And when you can check them against actual geography, social political reality, or known history they do a major fail.

Our best expert, Irenaeus, is babbling nonsense about fitting a 50+ year old Jesus into what is at best a 42 year long time period and saying Jesus was crucified no earlier then 42 CE even thought external records indicate this is impossible.

Just to add to the above -

Actually, the original dispute from Eight-Bits did not even arise over anything written in the gospels or in Paul's letters. What he disputed was me using the term "hearsay" in respect of Josephus and Tacitus.

However, the difference with those non-biblical sources, and the reason I described those as unacceptable "hearsay", is that (apparently) neither of those authors were even born at the time of the events concerning Jesus, so it would be physically impossible for them to be writing anything personally known to them from their own experience.

That’s a slightly different situation to what we have with any of the biblical writing where it might be claimed (very unconvincingly) that the writers were reporting eye-witness accounts of what the disciples and other named people actually saw and heard from Jesus.

Personally I have never described any of that biblical writing as “hearsay”, because apart from anything else I think nobody today seriously claims those to be genuine eye-witness accounts of anything about Jesus … and that certainly includes Eight-Bits long dispute about g-John where the anonymous writer implores the faithful to believe that a "beloved disciple" of Jesus witnessed him being stabbed on the cross (a passage which actually appears to have been taken from OT writing of long before).

IOW, as far as the gospels & Paul’s letters are concerned, whether it’s fair to call them hearsay or not, they are imho entirely discredited anyway by their constant claims of impossible supernatural events, as well as by the fact that we do not have any original copies from any of those authors anywhere near the time of the Jesus, and instead the only relatively complete copies from which such detail is readable in the extent being used to discuss the activities of Jesus, comes not from the 1st century AD but from Christian religious copies made some centuries later … too late to be confidently regarded as reliable.


Footnote - by the way, my bolding of posters names is just done as a courtesy to them, so that they can more easily see wherever I have referred to anything they have said.

 

[eight bits]

Actually, the original dispute from Eight-Bits did not even arise over anything written in the gospels or in Paul's letters. What he disputed was me using the term "hearsay" in respect of Josephus and Tacitus.

I don't dispute that Josephus and Tacitus are hearsay. What I dispute is that your labeling them as hearsay diagnoses why so many people find the passages unpersuasive about the topic.

One passage in Josephus has obviously been tampered with. In the other passage, Josephus seems to be talking about a different James-Jesus fraternal pair. Tacitus is fairly read as saying what Christians believe, rather than saying that what Christians believe is true.

How you would personally choose to classify evidence, and how your classification affects your personal estimate of bearing are your affair. Being hearsay is not an impersonally normative impediment to bearing, and reliance on hearsay is routine and inevitable in ancient historical inference. In contrast, being tampered with and not directly addressing the on-topic uncertainty are impediments to bearing. That's true of every type of evidence, regardless of its form.

 

[IanS]

I don't dispute that Josephus and Tacitus are hearsay. What I dispute is that your labeling them as hearsay diagnoses why so many people find the passages unpersuasive about the topic.

I don't think I ever labelled them in the way you say.

What I said about it is that they are not admissible as reliable evidence of the existence of Jesus for that reason of the writer simply reporting hearsay.

If anyone thinks there are other reasons why they regard what we have from such authors as unconvincing (eg so-called "interpolations"), then that is a matter for their own judgement.

However, claims of "interpolation" seem to me a type of criticism which can always be in dispute. That is always going to be a matter of opinion as to whether anyone thinks an absent original text has subsequently been altered.

Whereas the reason I would go straight to the hearsay element as the most obvious problem, is that it's quite obvious from the sentences themselves (whoever did actually write them) that the writer is not claiming to be a personal witness to any of the very few things he has to say about the Jesus stories.

So it's perfectly clear that such writing, whoever actually wrote it, and at whatever date the copies and/or any originals are supposed to date from, that the writing itself is first and foremost not actually "evidence" of Jesus from the author himself (it may be evidence that the writer had heard of earlier Christians telling those stories about Jesus, but it is not itself any evidence from that author of a living Jesus).

 

[eight bits]

I don't think I ever labelled them in the way you say.

Thank you for clearing that up, then. We still seem to be in agreement that the on-topic writings of Josephus and Tacitus are hearsay. We differ in the impact of that observation upon our respective estimates of bearing. Nevertheless, neither of us appears to end up giving them much weight on the uncertainty surrounding the existence of a historical Jesus who counts.

 

[Stone]

I'm late on this thread obviously, and also obviously, I really cannot be bothered trawling back through 4000+ posts, so my apologies if anything I post now has all been posted before.

I wan't to get back to the original question "What counts as a Historical Jesus?"

As far as I am aware, there is not the tiniest scrap of evidence that Jesus Christ ever existed. There are...

► no first person writings or documents attributed to the hand of Jesus,
► no contemporaneous writings by first hand witnesses,
► no physical articles that belonged to him (the Shroud has been proven a 13thC fake),
► no buildings or works attributed to him.
► no contemporaneous Roman records of Pilate executing someone called Jesus,
► no contemporaneous writings anywhere that even mention Jesus Christ

Further, even what we have is of highly dubious veracity...

► every claim that a real person called Jesus existed is second or third hand,
► every document referring to Jesus can only be dated to many years after his alleged death.
► every piece of documentation, be they scrolls or written accounts of any kind, come from either unknown sources, or from people whose own reality of existence is unproven.

In addition, there are numerous sources of "information" about Jesus that are fraudulent, mythical, obvious works of fantasy, or wild and unreliable far-fetched interpretations of the writings of others.

In short, all the evidence is hearsay, and for the critical thinker and the skeptical mind, hearsay evidence is not evidence at all.

So, I will rephrase the question from "What counts as a Historical Jesus?" to "What evidence would I find acceptable that a Historical Jesus really existed?"

1. Written, contemporaneous records of the Romans showing that Pontius Pilate was responsible for executing a man called Jesus, along with two common thieves, approximately 2000 years ago in Palestine.

2. First person eye witness accounts of things that Jesus did, actually written by the eyewitness, and written at the time.

3. [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]First person eye witness accounts of the crucifixion, again written by the actual witness.

4. Multiple, independent sources for all of the above.
[/FONT]

You've just thrown out half of ancient history. If you had your way, a photoshop den would be busy 24/7 painting out everyone from Leukippos to Thales to Hillel to Hannibal to Boadicca to Pythagoras to Confucius to Apollonius to Sun Tzu to Brhaspati to Ajita to Narayana to hundreds more. The sheer ignorance of ancient history shown in your virtual screed here is utterly appalling.

Of course, I know that, immediately now, every one of the a-historicists here will eagerly hold on to and obsess over -- individually -- each and every one of the figures I've just cited, and place each one in convenient isolation, so that they don't have to honestly address just what those hundreds and hundreds of figures illustrate as a whole: THE FACT THAT PROFESSIONAL ANCIENT HISTORY IS REPLETE WITH FIGURES WHOSE DOCUMENTATION IS EQUALLY SPARSE. THAT'S MY CHIEF POINT.

<snip>

Stone

Edited by Loss Leader: 

Edited for Rules 0/12

 

[Stone]

Ultimately, Wells ended up re-framing his perspective toward a possible HJ, somewhen, somehow, because of the sayings, particular the parallel ones in Matt./Luke, sometimes referenced as the so-called "Q" sayings. But this thread hasn't gone into those sayings that much. Why? Oh it's gone into them somewhat, but not in the kind of detail typically lavished here on so much else. In fact, some of the most conspicuous, individual and consequential sayings have barely been touched on at all. For instance, it's remarkable that "Love your enemies" gets only one cite in one-hundred-plus pages!

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9264809&postcount=2480

If someone like Wells ultimately found those sayings to be more persuasive as history than anything in the rest of the data, they certainly deserve more attention than they usually get here.

Let's get started. For sheer appearance frequency in the originals at relatively more independent and earlier strata, like Mark, Paul, Thomas, or "Q" (instead of dependent levels like later spinoffs of Mark, etc.), two sayings in particular reappear the most, "There are last which shall be first" & "Lose your life to others to save it". On the off-chance, then, that those two may go back the earliest, we may be looking at two sayings here that Jesus himself may have stressed the most, more than some of the others, which may not even be from him at all.

Now clearly, of all the sayings, the golden rule became the most repeated in later generations. But unlike the two already cited, the golden rule is not original to Jesus at all, first appearing in an ancient Egyptian tale, "Eloquent Peasant". Here, the Golden Rule is introduced as "Act for the man who acts, to cause him to act". Centuries later, a disciple talking with Confucius in the Analects assures Confucius that "I won't do unto others what I would not wish done to me", to which Confucius responds "Tzu-Lu, you're not at that level yet!"

The other two cited sayings here, on the other hand, appear, in fact, as core principles, entirely Jesus's own, & a justified claim to fame -- justified, that is, in that no one else in history has laid claim to them. They first appear as Jesus's and they remain so for the balance of the historic record. Similarly, the most recent research appears to confirm "Love your enemies" as unique to Jesus. The first two, in appearing to be unique, have not even been as exhaustively researched as "Love your enemies". The latter has been subjected to the most intense scrutiny of all -- and it is also a saying associated with some of the earliest textual strata we have. Yes, plenty before Jesus have said things like "Don't hate those that hate you", or "Respond to injury without injury", and so on. But pro-active encouragement to go out and actually love one's enemies is a step too far for every other thinker known in history.

Consequently, going by the textual and strata patterns, the central message of the sayings is not the golden rule but either "There are last which shall be first" or "Lose your life to others to save it" -- or "Love your enemies". These are all unique to Jesus, but not the golden rule. These three are of the most central historic importance then, and in fact, their rapidest success was among the slaves -- hardly a coincidence. The philosophy is both wise & original here if we stick to these and similarly multiply attested "planks".

This philosophy would have spread like wildfire no matter what, purely because of its radical aspects. No, most don't follow it, of course, but that doesn't stop it from making a splash purely because of its eccentricity. Still, it's something to ponder the even greater impact it might have had if the noxious mumbo-jumbo that the church added on hadn't effectively muffled it. But it did. For a while, it was even forbidden for anyone but church officials to look at it. Only the virgin birth and the post-Resurrection appearances were distributed widely -- the latest accretions of all to the textual strata. No surprise, of course. The church hierarchy clearly detested, feared and loathed the social commentary but found the mumbo-jumbo innocuous. Churchmen have done their muffling work most efficiently: To this day, even on freethought sites in the twenty-first century, it's the bogus magic man that gets talked about, not the radical social thinker. Congratulations, churchmen, and a hearty **** you.

What also stamps certain "planks" like "Love your enemies" as so unusual is that sayings like this don't aid the sort of cult-think typical of brainwashers like the churchmen whose chief interest is in promoting a circle-the-wagons siege mentality. For altruism as startling as "Love your enemies", it remains unlikely, though not impossible, that a mere transcribing disciple -- however dedicated to the spirit of a social radical like Jesus -- would bother to offer caveats admonishing a general love of one's opponents when his primary concern would be to promote an acceptance of Christians and Christianity above all. Usually, planks established "by committee" inculcate us/them, not Love your enemies.

It remains barely possible that someone else sincerely extrapolated the fundamentals of Jesus' message through proselytizing with admonishments so profoundly selfless and specific as these, admonishments not strictly reflecting the letter of Jesus' own formulations at all, merely their spirit. Nevertheless, that still seems less likely than one lone visionary eccentric speaking for himself without yet having some "institution" in mind at all. Caveats of such specific selflessness just come more plausibly from an independent pioneer, not from later followers who might sometimes be "plus royaliste que le roi", for whom caring for one's enemies would be the last thing they'd have in mind. In the end then, who else but Jesus himself could most plausibly have voiced such a warning against knee-jerk vindictiveness? That consideration alone would seem to confirm the general authenticity of the so-called "Q" passages.

So far, no other name than Jesus is associated with these sayings. And since there's a symbiotic textual history attached to the smallest nexus of these sayings -- and by coincidence, the most radical nexus -- tying them together at a very early textual stage -- historians go with the more likely option rather than the less likely: The more likely is that a small core of sayings among the couple of hundred out there more likely than not comes from one individual flouting his peers rather than several hucksters snake-oil-ing them.

Question for a-historicists: WHO WAS THAT ONE INDIVIDUAL WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EARLIEST RADICAL NEXUS OF SAYINGS IF IT WAS NOT JESUS? And if you still think that pro-active stuff like Love your enemies can be generated by committee, that bridge is still for sale.

Stone

I note that no a-historicist here has addressed this post.

Why am I not surprised?

Stone

 

[Belz...]

You've just thrown out half of ancient history.

Well that does raise questions, doesn't it ?

On the one hand, should we make any claim or reach any conclusion about ancient history if this is the level of evidence we're talking about ? And on the other hand, are we reaching these conclusions because we feel we need at least one leading version of history ?

If the answer to the second question is "yes", as you and Piggy seem to be indicating, then aren't we just making up conclusions that have little to do with reality ? I mean, if we're not sure, for example, that Ramses II existed at all, why act as if we were ? Same for Jesus, really. Only for Jesus, the evidence is a lot worse.

 

[pakeha]

...Consequently, going by the textual and strata patterns, the central message of the sayings is not the golden rule but either "There are last which shall be first" or "Lose your life to others to save it" -- or "Love your enemies". These are all unique to Jesus, but not the golden rule. These three are of the most central historic importance then, and in fact, their rapidest success was among the slaves -- hardly a coincidence. The philosophy is both wise & original here if we stick to these and similarly multiply attested "planks".

This philosophy would have spread like wildfire no matter what, purely because of its radical aspects. No, most don't follow it, of course, but that doesn't stop it from making a splash purely because of its eccentricity. Still, it's something to ponder the even greater impact it might have had if the noxious mumbo-jumbo that the church added on hadn't effectively muffled it. But it did. For a while, it was even forbidden for anyone but church officials to look at it. Only the virgin birth and the post-Resurrection appearances were distributed widely -- the latest accretions of all to the textual strata. No surprise, of course. The church hierarchy clearly detested, feared and loathed the social commentary but found the mumbo-jumbo innocuous. Churchmen have done their muffling work most efficiently: To this day, even on freethought sites in the twenty-first century, it's the bogus magic man that gets talked about, not the radical social thinker. Congratulations, churchmen, and a hearty **** you.

What also stamps certain "planks" like "Love your enemies" as so unusual is that sayings like this don't aid the sort of cult-think typical of brainwashers like the churchmen whose chief interest is in promoting a circle-the-wagons siege mentality. For altruism as startling as "Love your enemies", it remains unlikely, though not impossible, that a mere transcribing disciple -- however dedicated to the spirit of a social radical like Jesus -- would bother to offer caveats admonishing a general love of one's opponents when his primary concern would be to promote an acceptance of Christians and Christianity above all. Usually, planks established "by committee" inculcate us/them, not Love your enemies.

It remains barely possible that someone else sincerely extrapolated the fundamentals of Jesus' message through proselytizing with admonishments so profoundly selfless and specific as these, admonishments not strictly reflecting the letter of Jesus' own formulations at all, merely their spirit. Nevertheless, that still seems less likely than one lone visionary eccentric speaking for himself without yet having some "institution" in mind at all. Caveats of such specific selflessness just come more plausibly from an independent pioneer, not from later followers who might sometimes be "plus royaliste que le roi", for whom caring for one's enemies would be the last thing they'd have in mind. In the end then, who else but Jesus himself could most plausibly have voiced such a warning against knee-jerk vindictiveness? That consideration alone would seem to confirm the general authenticity of the so-called "Q" passages.

So far, no other name than Jesus is associated with these sayings. And since there's a symbiotic textual history attached to the smallest nexus of these sayings -- and by coincidence, the most radical nexus -- tying them together at a very early textual stage -- historians go with the more likely option rather than the less likely: The more likely is that a small core of sayings among the couple of hundred out there more likely than not comes from one individual flouting his peers rather than several hucksters snake-oil-ing them.

Question for a-historicists: WHO WAS THAT ONE INDIVIDUAL WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE EARLIEST RADICAL NEXUS OF SAYINGS IF IT WAS NOT JESUS? And if you still think that pro-active stuff like Love your enemies can be generated by committee, that bridge is still for sale.

Stone

I note that no a-historicist here has addressed this post.

Why am I not surprised?

Stone

By a strange coincidence in another thread I'm following, in another forum, someone addressed this very point
"To follow-up on this again, because it is very important: as far as the Jesus character's instruction to "love your enemies" being something powerfully original and intrinsic to the unsurpassed ethical teaching of the Galilean preacher man -- it is actually the opposite of that in context. Jesus and the apostles' "enemies" here are the Pharisees, and by extension, "the Jews" (as they are objectified throughout most of the gospels). Persecution by said "enemy" is to be welcomed, because it vouchsafes the authenticity of Jesus and the apostles' mission. "The Jews" and "their" ancestors have killed and persecuted all of "their" prophets; thus their continued persecution ensures a great reward in heaven to those who have secretly uncovered the true meaning of "the scriptures" -- that the Kingdom of God actually belongs to the Gentiles, not "the Jews" at all.


Luke 6:22-23 NIV
Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

Luke 6:26
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

Matthew 5:11-12
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.


Christianity as we have it was an anti-semitic cult. This is not something to be hand-waved away. Anti-semitism was not an unfortunate by-product of the religion, or the racial attitudes of the day, but the very heart of the emerging proto-orthodox church's ideology. They had read ancient scriptures and figured out that since "the Jews" had "killed all their prophets," then the Most High God must have actually meant for the Gentiles to "supersede" the Old Covenant. All of the NT literature was written with this attitude. The anti-semitisms are not "later redactions" but were right there from the start."
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/christianity/historical-jesus-t219-22100.html#p1215932

I was struck by this commentary, as it's the first time I've read such a rebuttal of the 'Love your enemies' injunction.

 

[IanS]

Thank you for clearing that up, then. We still seem to be in agreement that the on-topic writings of Josephus and Tacitus are hearsay. We differ in the impact of that observation upon our respective estimates of bearing. Nevertheless, neither of us appears to end up giving them much weight on the uncertainty surrounding the existence of a historical Jesus who counts.

OK, good. I think that's about the size of it.