Would the apostolic fathers have had motivation to lie ?

[Craig B]

Gao

Again, I think you're being too confident, in stating that "Tacitus quite clearly references Jesus at the beginning of the second century". In fact, like Pliny and Suetonius, he never even mentions the name Jesus, only a "christ". Here are his words, from Annals 15.44:

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

The authenticity of this passage has indeed been challenged, as you may see at
http://seekerthoughts.blogspot.com/2006/03/did-tacitus-mention-jesus.html on the grounds that

1. No contemporary historians record a Neronian persecution of Christians.
2. Nero’s famed minister, Seneca, wrote extensively but never even mentioned Christians in Rome.
3. Eusebius never refers to this passage when makng the claim of Neronian persecution.
4. Tertullian quoted Tacitus extensively, but never refers to this passage.
5. No commentator who quoted Tacitus ever made reference to this passage before the 15th century.

The reason no commentator made reference to this passage before the 15th century is that the entire “Annals” in which it appears was unknown until the purported “discovery” made by Johannes de 1468.

It is always cause for suspicion when a copy of an “ancient” writing by a famous historian is suddenly discovered, centuries after the death of the author, containing passages radically different from other writings by that author which enjoyed continuity. The fact that those touting the discovery had a vested interest in the spurious passage makes it even more doubtful, as this provides a motive for the forgery.

This is very much a minority view, and I am not attracted by it. Much more telling is the argument that Tacitus is not here an independent witness, and is merely recycling information received from Christians, who by the year 116 certainly existed as we know from Pliny. Our other source, Suetonius, has a "chrestus" instigating disturbances among Jews in Rome, which isn't in the CV of the Christian Jesus.

One argument that Tacitus did not draw on contemporary records is his reference to Pilate as a "procurator". This was the rank of the governor of Judea in Tacitus' own day, but in the time of Nero, the title was "prefect", and indeed in 1961 an inscription was discovered at Caesaria Maritima containing the words (PON)TIUS (PRAEF)ECTUS IUDA(EAE). So, even if authentic, the Tacitean reference is thus probably not independent.

So what if Tacitus knew something about the layout of Rome decades earlier? Most people who undertake to write historical treatises equip themselves with information of that kind; albeit that Tacitus was notorious for not consulting primary sources.

Finally, for a negative view of Tacitus' qualities as a historian (in this case a critique of his accounts of the acts and character of Tiberius), see http://janusquirinus.org/essays/Tiberius.html .

May I stress, I am not in fact a mythicist. But there is almost nothing about Jesus that can be asserted with any confidence - we can only state what is most probable: miracle birth no, crucifixion yes - and our independent sources are all flawed, or late, or both.

John, by the way, may be independent, but he is worthless.

 

[Craig B]

Gao

I forgot to mention your comment in post #32:

What? Do you actually know anything about either the early church or religion in the Roman empire? The persecutions were never about money.

However, the powerful voice of none other than Voltaire speaks against your "never". See his "Treatise on Tolerance" at http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=...title=349&chapter=28197&layout=html&Itemid=27

For instance, when St. Lawrence refused to give to the Roman prefect, Cornelius Secularis, the money of the Christians which he held, the prefect and emperor would naturally be irritated. They did not know that St. Lawrence had distributed the money to the poor, and done a charitable and holy act. They regarded him as rebellious, and had him put to death.

It would be quite true to say that the persecutions were essentially not about money, but money is usually to be found lurking somewhere in or near most human activities.

 

[Gao]

Well I brought up the layout of Rome issue due to it being quite problematic to someone who wants to claim that that passage is a later interpolation. I'm fully aware that that tells us nothing about whether Tacitus was writing correctly about Christians. I was mostly just responding to that one post, which claimed that there were no independent sources, and that all mentions in contemporary histories were obvious insertions. These are both clearly false statements. Whether the sources we have are any good or whether Tacitus was truly independent is another issue entirely.


And I want to respond to another post about the article that was brought up:

The gist is that prior to the 3rd Century CE, there was no mention of Christ as we've come to know of him in the literature of the church, nor any in any of the contemporary histories.
Enthusiastic editors made things up and altered older histories to fit the biases of their times.

So is this article seriously claiming that there were no Gospels, or at least none that resemble the ones we have, until the third century? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying here?

 

[Craig B]

Gao

I agree with you about that one post, and also about the absurdity of suggesting that there was no literature about Christ - even no gospels! - until the 3rd century. I was only suggesting that there's no early independent "historical" as opposed to "ideological" evidence for the truth of any part of the Jesus story.

Thus we're reduced to assessing probabilities, which is pointless when you're trying to reconstruct history. I mean is it probable that there was a king of Great Britain in 1870 who had black hair? Well, yes. One with 2 heads? Less probable. But it doesn't matter, because in fact Britain didn't have a king at that time, as we happen to know from the historical record.

For Jesus there is no historical record.

 

[Gao]

I wouldn't say that there's no historical record. It's just that it's a crappy, one sided record. This doesn't make it useless. We in fact quite regularly have to use iffy sources for ancient history. For instance, there's this work called the Historia Augusta that gives biographies for 2nd and 3rd century emperors, many of which have no other detailed, surviving work about them. The problem is that it's awful. There are errors all over the place, it claims to be written by several authors over the third century when it's been shown pretty strongly to have been written by one guy at the end of the fourth, and it's been pointed out that some sections seem to be set ups and punchlines (i.e. a section in the biography of Elagabalus going on about how awful it was that people just made up ridiculous stuff about him followed immediately by a large section of absurd, obviously made up stuff), so it might in fact have been intended to be read as a parody of histories, not a real history itself. Despite this, few historians completely toss it out. They are pretty sure that it used some now lost sources, and they carefully try to figure out what information comes from them. Even if it's a parody, one can try to figure out the basis for the jokes and exaggerations. There are indeed a lot of gray areas, but that doesn't mean that we can't use it.

Really, in virtually all ancient history, we have to use probabilities. After all, we usually only have a few written sources, most of which were from people of the same class who had similar interests. We have coins, monuments, and other archeological evidence to help us, but that hardly tells us whether Caligula was really mad, whether Philip the Arab really had Gordian III killed, whether Alexander the Great really cut the Gordian Knot, etc. Is it really pointless to work with probabilities to figure things out? Would you just drop anything you can't verify archeologically from a reconstruction of history?

 

[Craig B]

Gao

Indeed there are gaps in the historical record, so we can't be sure if Elagabalus was really such a very naughty boy, or whether it's Polybius or Livy (or neither) who is right about which route Hannibal took across the Alps.

However, the "record" for Jesus is not merely incomplete, but seems to have been constructed out of thin air to satisfy various ideological requirements. His birth, his preaching, his miracles, his death - accounts of all of these look not merely like poorly recorded events which our understanding is compelled to eke out with judicious supposition in order to produce a coherent narrative; they look like a collection of fairy stories. The more detail their authors vouchsafe unto us, the more preposterous the tales seem.

As Tom Paine stated with great boldness and clear-mindedness more than two centuries ago:

These repeated forgeries and falsifications create a well- founded suspicion that all the cases spoken of concerning the person called Jesus Christ are made cases, on purpose to lug in, and that very clumsily, some broken sentences from the Old Testament, and apply them as prophecies of those cases; and that so far from his being the Son of God, he did not exist even as a man -- that he is merely an imaginary or allegorical character, as Apollo, Hercules, Jupiter, and all the deities of antiquity were. There is no history written at the time Jesus Christ is said to have lived that speaks of the existence of such a person, even as a man.

"Examination of the Prophecies". See http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/examine_prophecies.html I am left with the same impression when I study the sources of "information" about Jesus.

 

[Gao]

There certainly are clearly invented parts of the Jesus story. The contradictory, nonsensical virgin birth stories probably being the worst offender. The problem is that one needs to be very careful to separate "this story has mythological elements" from "this story is a myth." For instance, we certainly have tales of mythical figures like Hercules and Perseus being the product of a union between a deity and a human woman, but we have the same story for Alexander the Great (Plutarch) and Augustus Caesar (Suetonius) as well. Similarly, we have plenty of mythical figures who were said to have been resurrected or somehow appeared after their supposed death, but we have the same for Apollonius of Tyana (Philostratus), Nero (many sources), and even today you get this claim of people like Elvis.

When I look at the Jesus story, I see the same sort of mythologizing that happened to these people. Things like being prophesied, being the product of a woman and a god, having to escape from a wicked king who wanted to kill him, and the like aren't all that unusual for stories about significant historical figures back then, as is some sort of conquest of death. Lifetime miracles aren't that unusual either, and people like Augustus Caesar, Vespasian, and Apollonius of Tyana being said to have performed some. We therefore have to be very careful to not throw the baby out with the bathwater when we examine ancient works to figure out which parts are mythical additions and which are not.

 

[I Ratant]

Well I brought up the layout of Rome issue due to it being quite problematic to someone who wants to claim that that passage is a later interpolation. I'm fully aware that that tells us nothing about whether Tacitus was writing correctly about Christians. I was mostly just responding to that one post, which claimed that there were no independent sources, and that all mentions in contemporary histories were obvious insertions. These are both clearly false statements. Whether the sources we have are any good or whether Tacitus was truly independent is another issue entirely.


And I want to respond to another post about the article that was brought up:

So is this article seriously claiming that there were no Gospels, or at least none that resemble the ones we have, until the third century? Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying here?

.
Wells compiles many comments on the originality and sources for the gospels, which he says are traditions based on an early first-century Galilean preacher. He says Paul's epistles pre-date any gospel, and lack any reference to a Galilean ministry at all, or to any of the experiences later published in the gospels. The earlier first-century compilations were just of the sayings attributed to Jesus.
In the second century, the writers refer to Jesus in a manner unknown in the earliest documents.
He ends the article with "How Paul and other early Christian writers could come to worship a crucified Messiah not to be identified with the early first-century Galilean preacher of the gospels is a question that must be faced..."
I leave to the historians to wrangle over this, but there's sufficient evidence to doubt that much of any of the stories have any basis in reality, and are just wishful thinking.

 

[tsig]

.
Wells compiles many comments on the originality and sources for the gospels, which he says are traditions based on an early first-century Galilean preacher. He says Paul's epistles pre-date any gospel, and lack any reference to a Galilean ministry at all, or to any of the experiences later published in the gospels. The earlier first-century compilations were just of the sayings attributed to Jesus.
In the second century, the writers refer to Jesus in a manner unknown in the earliest documents.
He ends the article with "How Paul and other early Christian writers could come to worship a crucified Messiah not to be identified with the early first-century Galilean preacher of the gospels is a question that must be faced..."
I leave to the historians to wrangle over this, but there's sufficient evidence to doubt that much of any of the stories have any basis in reality, and are just wishful thinking.

Lying for Jesus is a fine old tradition.

 

[Gao]

.
Wells compiles many comments on the originality and sources for the gospels, which he says are traditions based on an early first-century Galilean preacher. He says Paul's epistles pre-date any gospel, and lack any reference to a Galilean ministry at all, or to any of the experiences later published in the gospels. The earlier first-century compilations were just of the sayings attributed to Jesus.
In the second century, the writers refer to Jesus in a manner unknown in the earliest documents.
He ends the article with "How Paul and other early Christian writers could come to worship a crucified Messiah not to be identified with the early first-century Galilean preacher of the gospels is a question that must be faced..."
I leave to the historians to wrangle over this, but there's sufficient evidence to doubt that much of any of the stories have any basis in reality, and are just wishful thinking.

Does he actually give any answer at all to the "question that must be faced"? Because without that, you end up with this really odd scenario of these early Christians worshipping a deity who apparently underwent an embarrassing death, then this being getting conflated with some sort of real life guy for some reason, and then a story merging these figures coming about, and even the critics of the religion were fooled into thinking this all referred to a real guy. That's really bizarre, and I've never heard anything like it. Isn't it a much simpler explanation that Jesus was a real preacher who gained mythical tales after his death like so many others (i.e. Apollonius of Tyana or even Augustus Caesar), and that Paul was writing theological, not historical letters?

In addition, which second century authors is he referring to? Aside from maybe John, the Gospels are normally dated to the first century, and my understanding was that there are specific references to them in the 2nd.

I haven't read this article, but from what you're telling me, it sounds like he's pretty far from mainstream history. I'd be wary about repeating the "facts" you read there without further confirmation.

 

[Craig B]

Gao

... this really odd scenario of these early Christians worshipping a deity who apparently underwent an embarrassing death, then this being getting conflated with some sort of real life guy for some reason, and then a story merging these figures coming about, and even the critics of the religion were fooled into thinking this all referred to a real guy. That's really bizarre, and I've never heard anything like it. Isn't it a much simpler explanation that Jesus was a real preacher who gained mythical tales after his death like so many others

Yes, on the whole I agree. However, it is really of no moment from a philosophical point of view. What is left for this mini-Jesus to do? Preach, yes, but what? Various contradictory things are given him to say by the gospels. Which, if any, are the words of the real Jesus? They can't all be. So he preached, but we can't with certainty ascribe a single word to him! And a lot of the stuff he is made to say is nonsense. Love your enemy - but hate your family. Eh ... ? So the "real preacher" is in reality a total vacuity.

We know nothing about his alleged companions, who are just names, with a couple of exceptions, which we know about from Paul, who might well have been misinformed.

Did Jesus create a disturbance in the Temple at Passover, and get executed? Perhaps, but that's not much. Jesus son of Ananias created disturbances, copped a plea, and got off with a flogging. He's not a god.

The rest of the Jesus of Nazareth tale is myth.

Non-existent people can give rise to complex myths. Take the very similar mediaeval heroes - the Swiss William Tell, and the English Robin Hood. Neither existed, though they have biographies and named companions. The Scottish equivalent, William Wallace, about whom equally mythical tales are told, in fact did exist - unlike Jesus he appears in contemporary historical records. But still, most of the tales that assembled round his name are nonsense.

It's a bit like a crystal forming around a knot suspended in a saturated solution. The knot is required, but regardless of its shape, the crystal will end up with the same form. Otherwise stated: by examining the crystal, nothing can be inferred about the shape of the original knot.

Jesus, if he existed, is like that knot.

 

[Leumas]

Gao

... this really odd scenario of these early Christians worshipping a deity who apparently underwent an embarrassing death, then this being getting conflated with some sort of real life guy for some reason, and then a story merging these figures coming about, and even the critics of the religion were fooled into thinking this all referred to a real guy. That's really bizarre, and I've never heard anything like it. Isn't it a much simpler explanation that Jesus was a real preacher who gained mythical tales after his death like so many others

Yes, on the whole I agree. However, it is really of no moment from a philosophical point of view. What is left for this mini-Jesus to do? Preach, yes, but what? Various contradictory things are given him to say by the gospels. Which, if any, are the words of the real Jesus? They can't all be. So he preached, but we can't with certainty ascribe a single word to him! And a lot of the stuff he is made to say is nonsense. Love your enemy - but hate your family. Eh ... ? So the "real preacher" is in reality a total vacuity.

We know nothing about his alleged companions, who are just names, with a couple of exceptions, which we know about from Paul, who might well have been misinformed.

Did Jesus create a disturbance in the Temple at Passover, and get executed? Perhaps, but that's not much. Jesus son of Ananias created disturbances, copped a plea, and got off with a flogging. He's not a god.

The rest of the Jesus of Nazareth tale is myth.

Non-existent people can give rise to complex myths. Take the very similar mediaeval heroes - the Swiss William Tell, and the English Robin Hood. Neither existed, though they have biographies and named companions. The Scottish equivalent, William Wallace, about whom equally mythical tales are told, in fact did exist - unlike Jesus he appears in contemporary historical records. But still, most of the tales that assembled round his name are nonsense.

It's a bit like a crystal forming around a knot suspended in a saturated solution. The knot is required, but regardless of its shape, the crystal will end up with the same form. Otherwise stated: by examining the crystal, nothing can be inferred about the shape of the original knot.

Jesus, if he existed, is like that knot.

I am reading a GREAT book (almost finished) Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There. In it is a story of three little sisters who HOAXED their parents, the village, the country and eventually the entire world.

Their hoax initiated a whole new religion....spiritualism

They later admitted the hucksterism and revealed all.

They were not believed and spiritualism is still with us today.

So even when the HUCKSTERS THEMSELVES admit to the lie.....the FAITHFUL reject the confession and continue on with their "faith" even with renewed vigor.

 

[dude]

It's complicated. One particular issue is the Gospel of the Hebrews. According to some church fathers, the apostle Matthew originally wrote a Gospel in Aramaic with Hebrew letters, and this was translated into our surviving Matthew, though it's now agreed that our Matthew was based largely on Mark, Q, and some other sources. Many of these father identified this Hebrew Matthew with a work called The Gospel of the Hebrews, which we only have a few fragments of. This work was not considered cannon by most groups, but Jerome said the Ebionites considered it cannon, and they denied a virgin birth. So as convoluted as it is, one may be able to make the case that it's possible that Matthew wrote a work that denied a virgin birth.

I guess maybe I should clarify my reasoning for this, was it possible or common for to claim succession from a known apostle (a claim I read against the gnostics claim that they had knowledge or secret apostles) or was the apostolic church fathers' position seen as unassailable ?

I thought a way to figure this out would be to know would be if there were heretics who claimed succession from the 12.

I'm trying to figure out if the whole thing was bottom up (the resurrection and what not originated from the disciples) or top down (different churches with different claims sprung up and claimed succession to lend credence to their doctrines).

 

[I Ratant]

Does he actually give any answer at all to the "question that must be faced"? ...

.
He's a prolific author, mentioning a lot of his books on the subject.. and says following up on that question is properly the subject for a different article.
.

Because without that, you end up with this really odd scenario of these early Christians worshipping a deity who apparently underwent an embarrassing death, then this being getting conflated with some sort of real life guy for some reason, and then a story merging these figures coming about, and even the critics of the religion were fooled into thinking this all referred to a real guy. That's really bizarre, and I've never heard anything like it. Isn't it a much simpler explanation that Jesus was a real preacher who gained mythical tales after his death like so many others (i.e. Apollonius of Tyana or even Augustus Caesar), and that Paul was writing theological, not historical letters?

.
You said the same thing twice... basically Jesus -may have been- a real figure, with the myth crap building on that over time.
Paul was brain-damaged... falling off a horse can do that.
Mixing reality with head noises is part and parcel of the OT and the NT.
(And all other "revealed" religions.)

 

[Craig B]

Wells speaks of a change in his views: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/g_a_wells/errant.html

the change in my position concerning the traditions ... which is clearly stated in my two most recent books, JL and JM. Recent work on Q led me to accept that the gospels (unlike the Pauline and the other early epistles) may include traditions about a truly historical itinerant preacher of the early first century.

Previously he had been a total mythicist, even with regard to the "preacher". See his "The Jesus of the Early Christians". But in fact, as I argue above, unless you know what a preacher preaches, the difference between his existence and non-existence has no importance.

 

[I Ratant]

Considering that all that comes before the "Word made Flesh" idea is myth, legend, superstition and b.s., there's no rational reason to try to shoehorn the NT stuff into something reasonable.
It's nice to have something real to build a story on, but as this one deals with the supernatural.. i.e., brain farts, why seek anything to corroborate the stories, other than that -someone- may have had a problem with the authorities at the time, and unhinged minds have taken that and the silliness in the OT and built up a ripping good yarn.
Much to the distress of the progress of humanity away from superstition and man-made horrors based on those superstitions.

 

[Pacal]

I want to make something abundantly clear: I'm not a missionary and this is not some rhetorical challenge to prove me wrong.

My story with religion goes as far as I was raised in a relatively conservative Christian family, when I was in my teens I decided that I hated the concept of hell and pretty much chucked the whole thing. Until recently I didn't really think of looking much further into Christian origins than the bible itself.

Apparently there was a chain of people who had contact with Jesus (and subsequently a chain that had contact with at least 2 of his disciples who cooberated the resurrection). Apparently there is a whole "who would die for a lie" argument that gets kicked around a lot.

The two most common explanations I hear are that disciples either convinced themselves that they had seen a resurrected Jesus, or lied to keep the movement going. I don't guess I find either to be impossible (although I find the latter more probable than the former). t seems much simpler to me that the guys in charge of early churches may have claimed apostolic succession in order to maintain legitimacy...but I don't know much about the early Church would these guys have had any kind of power that was worth lying over ?

Can anyone offer anything to support any of the other explanations ?

Please help a hick with a headache.

The problem with who would die for a lie arguement is that it can be used to justify all sorts of religious movements and thus proves nothing except the faith of the martyr. Every faith has it martyrs and so martyrdom proves nothing about the truth of the martyr's beliefs.

 

[Astrodude]

There's a little evidence of Jesus in the historical record and oddly enough, there's a whole lot of historical evidence for John the Baptist. The Gospel writers may have taken characters from two different time periods and put them together, or they may have merged to distinct religions. It's like when people wrote Medieval folk tales with Robin Hood and King Arthur together even though the historical bases of these men lived 800 years apart and did very different things.

The church fathers definitely had reason to lie: they had to convince people that there was more to morality than old ethnic traditions and Roman brutality. They lied because the lie was useful for the fostering of good morality. Oddly enough, current evidence suggests that Tacitus originally described the group called Christians as "Chrestians", which means useful. This suggests that early Christian leaders often played on a Christian/Chrestian pun and undoubtedly adopted their religion because they considered its practical effects to be beneficial.

We as humans usually call these types of lies 'allegories'.

 

[bikerdruid]

Medieval folk tales with Robin Hood and King Arthur together even though the historical bases of these men lived 800 years apart and did very different things.

i don't believe that was ever done.
i have never seen them put in the same storyline.

 

[Dayan81]

..Apparently there was a chain of people who had contact with Jesus (and subsequently a chain that had contact with at least 2 of his disciples who cooberated the resurrection). Apparently there is a whole "who would die for a lie" argument that gets kicked around a lot.

The two most common explanations I hear are that disciples either convinced themselves that they had seen a resurrected Jesus, or lied to keep the movement going. I don't guess I find either to be impossible (although I find the latter more probable than the former). t seems much simpler to me that the guys in charge of early churches may have claimed apostolic succession in order to maintain legitimacy...but I don't know much about the early Church would these guys have had any kind of power that was worth lying over?..

No one who actually saw the "Risen Christ" wrote a word of the New Testament. All testimony of him rising from the grave is 2nd-hand testimony, which would not be considered admissable evidence in any court in the land.

Let alone the fact that the original Gospel According to Mark does not include anyone actually witnessing a risen Christ. All we have is an empty tomb.