Why The Gospels Are Myth

[Joshpantera]

 

Hi O'Neil, I'd like to zero in on the evidence part of your blogs and forget the rest of the hammer grinding between you and Fitzgerald. You caught him screwing up, I'm embarrassed to see him trying to speak on behalf of Mythicism after I saw him in action. 

 

You wrote: 

 

Given the amount of study I've done on the subject, I'm naturally well aware of this - but he does love those weasely little parenthetical insinuations.  The point is that this simply doesn't matter.   How much of the passage is or isn't authentic is entirely beside the point: if any of it is an authentic mention of Jesus by Josephus, the Mythicist goose is well and truly cooked.  And the fact remains that the consensus of scholarship by experts Jewish, Christian, atheist, agnostic or Calathumpian is that Josephus did mention Jesus here.

 

That's odd. There's no slam dunk against Mythicism if the TF is only partially interpolated. And if Fitzgerald's whole argument folds over partial authenticity then he's a complete idiot for framing it that way. 

 

From what I understand the argument goes to the tune of 1) Josephus was not a contemporary witness to the existence of Jesus of Nazareth and 2) whether or not the TF is partially or wholly interpolated it only represents evidence that by the time Josephus was writing, a Jesus tradition existed for Josephus to write about well after the supposed life time. 

 

And he's crossed off the list as credible or certainty based evidence that would be needed to really settle the issue.  

 

The apologists as well as secular scholars who base their views on putting all the cards on non-contemporary source material (such as you did with Tacitus also) then go into depth about why they think non-contemporary source material is acceptable by comparing other historical figures who likewise don't have contemporary source evidence, but often times will actually turn out to have contemporary source material after all. I've seen that a lot. 

 

And then the whole thing boils down to whether or not we can say with certainty that a non-contemporary source can settle the issue. Since history itself is uncertain, basically, and as Doherty points out, we can't really settle on certainty for any of the historical figures including Jesus because ultimately you just don't get that kind of certainty from an uncertain social science.

 

Uncertain History = uncertainty.  

 

That's really the depth of the argument. It finally reaches a dead end. Unless we take a time machine and scour the first 5 or 6 decades of the 1st century around the places mentioned with camera's rolling we aren't going to know what exactly really happened, or didn't happen. We may favor this or that opinion, the consensus or an alternative view. 

 

As for me, I've decided to take the Mythicist position as default until such time as credible evidence that can solve the issue arises. 

 

Do you offer that sort of convincing evidence O'Neil? 

 

 

You can call me Tim - where I come from, addressing people by their surname only is seen as kind of aggressive.  (And my surname is O'Neill, not "O'Neil" anyway)

 

The partial authenticity of the TF is not a "slam dunk", but it means that even if all we had was that reference (and we have more) we have about as much evidence for a historical Jesus as we have for pretty much any other early first century Jewish preacher, prophet or Messianic claimant.  This means we have about as much evidnce for Jesus as we could expect to have for such a figure.  If this is somehow insufficient, then this not only means that all the other such figues are also (somehow) mythical as well but also that everyone in the ancient world for whom we have no contemporary attestation immediately becomes non-existent as well.  Given that this covers about 90%+ of everyone in the ancient world, this is obviously absurd.

 

That means it simply doesn't make sense to say "if we don't have a contemporary attestation, all we have is evidence there was a 'tradition' this person once existed". The most likely explanation for a later writer to refer to a figure as a recent historical person is that this is exactly what they were.  So we can't just dismiss everyone for whom we don't have contemporary attestation - we need to have some reason to suspect this person was not historical.  And in Jesus' case, we don't.  We have no trace of any alternative origins for the Jesus stories.  We have no references in the extensive early Christian condemnations of "heresies" that indicates an early Christian sect that believed in a purely allegorical/celestial/mythic version of Jesus.  We have no opponents of Christianity casting any doubt on his existence.  But we do have other things that do indicate his historicity - a reference to his brother in Ant. XX.91. and a reference to the same brother as someone that Paul met in Galatians 1:19, for example. 

 

So while an original, unredacted TF is not a "slam dunk", it is the same level of evidence we have for other such figures, as much evidence as we would expect for someone like Jesus and the equivalent to the evidence we have for the bulk of people in the ancient world.  Taken with the other evidence we have that indicates historicity, this makes the conclusion that he did the most parsimonious conclusion.

 

You say that these other people who are said to have non-contemporary evidence "often  times will actually turn out to have contemporary source material after all".  Okay then - try this: find me contemporary sources for any other early first century Jewish preacher, prophet or Messianic claimant.  Good luck.  In fact, you could open pretty much any page of Josephus or most other ancient historical work and pick a name at random and in most cases (give or take the odd emperor or king) you'll find that (i) that is the only reference to that person anywhere in the whole corpus of ancient literature and (ii) it's a non-contemporary reference.

 

This is just the nature of ancient source material.  And it also means that this idea that "uncertain history = uncertainty" doesn't work.  Our source material means that almost ALL ancient history is "uncertain history".  As I often say to people in these discussions, if you want certainty (let alone "proof") stick to maths or physics.  Ancient history in particular and pre-modern history doesn't work on that basis.  It's a matter of using highly fragmentary, often ambiguous and usually non-contemporary source materials as evidence and trying to make a determination of likelihood.  Most people who declare that the evidence for Jesus is not "certain" enough for them don't seem to realise that it's about typical for any such ancient figure.  This is the nature of the discipline.

 

 

Sorry Tim, that is not the custom here in the states or that I'm aware of on the world wide web either for that matter. I was only following in the usual custom in the Mythicist and Historicist global debate where key players are usually addressed by their surnames - Carrier, Doherty, Murdock, Price, Casey, Ehrman, etc. etc. I didn't mean to disrespect you or use it as an aggression. However there's a natural aggression at play, in any case, between a Mythicist and Historicist that certainly does apply to the back and fourth that I will readily admit to, it's just that referring to you as O'Neil was not meant to be part of it. The miss spell was my bad. I sort of rushed into the post without checking your name closely. 

 

Hell, I think you're pretty dam reasonable to be honest. More so than I consider Bart Ehrman after his book on Mythicism. I don't really find fault in your position taking because I once felt the same way - that the most probable Jesus was a mundane personality who was eventually blown way, way out of proportion after his death. I went from believer to an atheist historicist (as we now call it) around the age of 15 while off at Christian boarding academy. It became glaringly obvious that the whole dying and resurrecting and ascending bit was fantasy. I looked around the campus and starting seeing everything for what it really was - clueless people taking mythology way, way to literally and too seriously for that matter.

 

But certainly the man existed though, right?

 

You wrote:

So while an original, unredacted TF is not a "slam dunk", it is the same level of evidence we have for other such figures, as much evidence as we would expect for someone like Jesus and the equivalent to the evidence we have for the bulk of people in the ancient world.  Taken with the other evidence we have that indicates historicity, this makes the conclusion that he did the most parsimonious conclusion.

 

It's the accepted view, I'll grant you that. But Earl ;-) doesn't feel that way. I know you disagree with him while at the same time respecting his approach above and beyond most Mythicists, as you mentioned in your blog. We're all more or less ex-Christian people who once thought that a mundane historical Jesus is the most parsimonious conclusion. Earl, looking closely at the authentic Pauline Epistles and putting the Gospels aside realized that early on that by going back and looking through the earliest available perspectives, found that a strange celestial oriented type of Jesus belief pre-existed the Gospel orthodox traditions. And that it's more or less glossed over because of the way it's all placed behind the Gospels so that while reading the Bible the reader is already conditioned to think of things like the nativity, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So by the time the reader hits Acts (unauthentic) and the authentic Pauline epistles they don't pay very much mind to a celestial Jesus because hey, he just ascended to heaven in the Gospels and it makes sense that he's celestial in Paul. But that's a crafty way of arranging the later dated, back tracking material (Gospels) before the earlier devoid of very much detail material (Paul, etc.), isn't it? 

 

You also wrote: 

 

That means it simply doesn't make sense to say "if we don't have a contemporary attestation, all we have is evidence there was a 'tradition' this person once existed". The most likely explanation for a later writer to refer to a figure as a recent historical person is that this is exactly what they were.  So we can't just dismiss everyone for whom we don't have contemporary attestation - we need to have some reason to suspect this person was not historical.  And in Jesus' case, we don't.  We have no trace of any alternative origins for the Jesus stories.  We have no references in the extensive early Christian condemnations of "heresies" that indicates an early Christian sect that believed in a purely allegorical/celestial/mythic version of Jesus.  We have no opponents of Christianity casting any doubt on his existence.  But we do have other things that do indicate his historicity - a reference to his brother in Ant. XX.91. and a reference to the same brother as someone that Paul met in Galatians 1:19, for example.

 

 

Earl Doherty has written extensively about just that, the state of early Christianity before the Gospels and the reasons why we DO have some reason to suspect this person was not historical. Who was Josephus's source for referring to Jesus, who was known as Christ, as a recent historical person? Was he pulling this from a written record that had documented the early 1st century Jesus, or was he pulling this from hearsay about religious beliefs at the time, the time of the late 1st century? Or did Josephus even mention this person from the outset? 

 

Here's the first reason to suspect that this particular person may never have been historical in my own opinion - the fact that secular scholarship has down the line dismissed just about everything relevant about Jesus to the point of only leaving a few (you've already listed them) parts undisputed, just barely leaving a tid bit that keeps him historical but very mundane in comparison. I never knew that there was a Mythicist position at first. But I began to suspect that Jesus might not have even existed while learning the secular scholarship strip down. I wondered to myself, " jeez, at this point why not just suppose that the whole thing is mythology?" And then I discovered that many others have asked the same question and that a centuries old Jesus skepticism is still very much alive today. So I dove in and co-mingled with them. 

 

Maybe some readers are not familiar with how Earl Doherty treats the Josephus controversy. Here's a link to some relevant material to this topic of the TF: http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/supp10.htm

 

Here's the section where Earl starts getting into his alternative view of the James bit: 

 

The Brother of Jesus, the One Called (the) Christ

2. Did Josephus identify James by the “brother of Jesus” reference? - It is commonly argued that Josephus likes to identify for the reader’s sake a freshly introduced figure by some sort of explanatory description. This is his first (and only) reference to James, and thus the identification of Jesus as his brother serves this purpose. There are a number of potential flaws in this position.

Even if the observation about Josephus’ habit is valid, this does not reveal what Josephus may originally have written to identify James. (In a moment I will detail what may be a couple of possibilities.) There is no “certainty” that the identifying phrase as it stands now must have come from Josephus’ pen, for he may have described James by some other reference which was subsequently changed by a Christian copyist. That the latter was the case is suggested by the fact that the second part of the extant phrase is suspiciously identical to the one which concludes Matthew 1:16 (ho legomenos Christos: the one called (the) Christ, though the Josephan phrase is in an oblique case: tou legomenou Christou). The same phrase also appears in John 4:25.........

 

 

Historians have accepted Josephus as compelling. But I'm not entirely sure that that will always be the case though. If we already know that the TF was tampered with to some degree then we know that at least one zealous Christian saw no harm in altering Josephus. If we suppose that Josephus mentioned all of these various people named Jesus, but not directly the Jesus known to these later Christians and they felt that the NT Jesus ought to have been discussed or referenced in Josephus, then what's to stop them adding to one of these Jesus's who were mentioned Josephus the title of Christ, or to make it seem more authentic, a Jew referring to Jesus as the one who people called Christ? Because it's some what strange to have a non-Christian Jew giving Jesus the title of Christ while himself being a non believer. It would have made more sense for the copiest to slip it in as Josephus identifying Jesus as the one some people called Christ. 

 

Maybe they really believed that in all of the mix of Jesus's mentioned by Josephus that they selected the correct Jesus to add the Christ title to, but were in fact mistaken?

 

We're not talking about Galatians or anything Pauline yet, just strictly Josephus. We can't very well start talking about scripture and it's Jesus and James until we're certain that Josephus, with all of the Jesus's he was naming, really did name the Jesus of the Gospels and Paul, or had any reason to name those particular two particular people from the mythology. Fitzgerald was saying that the section ends by talking about some other Jesus. What if this James was mentioned in association with this other Jesus who was mentioned at the tail end of it, and as the argument goes, a footnote or something to that effect caused the bit about associating this other James and Jesus with the Gospel narrative to get written into later copies? It wouldn't have been malicious necessarily. But the error could have run on to this day. 

 

When you read through all of the Jesus's mentioned by Josephus, in edition, you can see how little bits and pieces of things mentioned about one or another Jesus show up about the Gospel Jesus. It's as if the Jesus in the Gospels could be some type of amalgamation of diverse people all wrapped up into one main story line Hero. The late dating ideas about the Gospels not appearing into the literary and historical record, concretely, until after Marcion, lend thought to the possibility of people reading Josephus, using bits and pieces of what he said about different Jesus's, and eventually some one coming along and thinking, "hell, Jesus the Christ ought to have been mentioned, let's go ahead and slap his name where it seems to fit." I know the late dating seems radical, but I've looked at every option on the table. They were probably started around the end of the 1st century and then worked over several times before they pop up behind Marcion's Gospel.  There's things about Luke and Acts that really seem suspect as a 2nd century reworking if not creation. 

 

The things that seem to appear to diverse people along with the parts that seem Hellenistic, usurping the pagan gods of the time, are all tossed in together. Of course that could have all happened after the death of one particular man as the consensus would have it, but at the same time it could have started out as Earl sees it with many different Jesus (the name means savior, or Yahweh is salvation)  traditions starting up only to get consolidated, eventually, by the orthodox type of mass audience structure. The point is that the current consensus could very well be wrong and I'm open to that possibility instead of closing it off. 

 

I'll respect your position taking and the consensus of secular scholarship to a certain degree just because it is the currently established view. But I have doubts nevertheless... 

[Joshpantera]

Jewplicate...

[Sextus]

It's an argument from historical precedent, an argument that "historic Jesus" acolytes are happy to avail themselves of when they think it suits their case. 

 

You misunderstand the word "precedent" in this context. It means prior to Jesus's time. So your examples of Muhammed, et al. are not relevant to my argument.

I can't see why analogous examples are somehow not relevant despite being contemporary or after. You're trying to claim that a single guy somehow can't start a mass movement. Which, as my examples and many others show, is an argument on a highway to nowhere, given that it's demonstrably nonsense - individuals do exactly that all the time, and have throughout history. I'm can't see why only examples from before Jesus count, for some reason. Did Jesus (despite not acutally existing, apparently) somehow make it possible for Appollonius of Tyana, or Mani, or Muhammed or John Smith or Bahá'u'lláh or Sai Baba or Vassarion to do exactly that?  

 

But if you want pre-Jesus examples, try the Teacher of Righteousness. He not only founded a Jewish sect that lasted at least 200 years but also achieved prominence enough beyond Judea that it was noted in the Diaspora by Philo and in far off Rome by Pliny the Elder.

 

Why you're persisting with this argument I have no idea. The idea that an individual could not found a mass movement within a few years or even that this is somehow "unlikely" is patenlty absurd. These things are not only likely, they're common. And Jesus of Nazareth doesn't even have to do that - he just needs to have a handful of followers still believe in him after his death: something that happens even more commonly. This argument is a total dead end for you.

[Sextus]

In my opinion a much more likely explanation is that there were many Judism offshoots prior to St. Paul.  Then you don't have to worry about the 14 year miracle.

A "much more likely explanation" for what, exactly?

 

Joseph Smith was not assigned awesome cosmic powers a few decades after he died.

No, peoople accepted that he could talk to Jesus, chat with angels and magically decipher mystical tablets of gold even before he died. And on the basis of these ideas, accepted him as a prophet and helped him establish a mass movement in a mere 14 years. Just like guess who.

 

 

It is not impossible that Crazy Homeless Jesus could have existed and had a few followers.

No, it isn't. So this whole line of argument is absolutely absurd. Because that's all that is needed to get Christianity off the ground.

 

It just seems unlikely that Christianity would grow so powerful in such a short time.

It wasn't "so powerful in a short time". It was insignificantly tiny. Even 300 years later, by the most optimistic estimates, it only made up 10-15% of the population of the Empire, and they were mainly the lower classes and slaves. "So powerful"? "In a short time"? Pardon?

[mymistake]

 

No, peoople accepted that he could talk to Jesus, chat with angels and magically decipher mystical tablets of gold even before he died. And on the basis of these ideas, accepted him as a prophet and helped him establish a mass movement in a mere 14 years. Just like guess who.

 

Those are not cosmic powers.  Most Christians delude themselves into believing they can talk with Jesus in their heart.  This is nothing like the power attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.  There are no stories of Joseph Smith emptying out a grave yard and turning saintly zombies loose on a city.  Apples and oranges.

 

And Joseph Smith had access to technology many centuries more advanced than what the Roman Empire had so getting as much done in only 14 years isn't so tough for Smith

 

 

 Because that's all that is needed to get Christianity off the ground.

 

 

However one guy and some followers is not the only way Christianity could have gotten off the ground.  Imagine for a minute that there was a real Jesus, brother of James and you had met him before he died.  Some guy hands you the book of Mark and it says Jesus fed 5,000 men.  But you were there and you know for a fact that didn't happen.  The Book of Mark says Jesus healed people all the time but you know that didn't happen.  The Book of Mark says Jesus could cast out demons but you know that didn't happen.  Would you be impressed with the book of Mark?

 

The inflation of the story just a few short years after the death of Jesus is crazy.

[Sextus]

Sorry Tim, that is not the custom here in the states or that I'm aware of on the world wide web either for that matter. I was only following in the usual custom in the Mythicist and Historicist global debate where key players are usually addressed by their surnames - Carrier, Doherty, Murdock, Price, Casey, Ehrman, etc. etc.

The usual custom in any academic writing (and in the minor online debate you mention) is that when you are referring to a writer or scholar you refer to them by their surname or in the third person (“Ehrman”, “he”). But if you are addressing them personally, either online or otherwise, you use their first name or the second person (“Bart”, “you”). If you were talking about me I’d have no problem referring to me as “O’Neill”. But given you’re talking to me, that’s a bit rude. Tim will be fine.

 

But certainly the man existed though, right?

I never go much further than to say “he most likely existed”. But I think that is much more likely than any of the Mythicist alternatives, which are full of holes.

 

It's the accepted view, I'll grant you that. But Earl ;-) doesn't feel that way.

Of course he doesn’t. If he did, how whole private theory would collapse. And having debated Doherty directly I can assure you that he is very emotionally invested in his theory.

 

Earl, looking closely at the authentic Pauline Epistles and putting the Gospels aside realized that early on that by going back and looking through the earliest available perspectives, found that a strange celestial oriented type of Jesus belief pre-existed the Gospel orthodox traditions.

No, what Doherty did was find various contrived ways to dispose of the very clear references to a recent, historical and human Jesus in Paul and then triumphantly concluded that, now these inconvenient pieces of counter evidence were gone, Paul didn’t believe in a recent, historical and human Jesus at all. This carefully constructed conclusion is a welter of problems. Leaving aside the contorted ways Doherty gets references to Jesus’ humanity like “born of a woman” to mean the precise opposite of what they clearly mean, he can’t adequately explain why this “celestial Jesus” proto-Christianity he has conjured up has left zero trace in the historical record. It’s supposed to have been a bitter rival of the “historical Jesus” version of Christianity for several centuries, yet there is no trace of it anywhere. And this is despite an extensive early Christian literature about “heretical” rival forms of the faith. Despite many rival sects being detailed and condemned, including some which had already been extince for centuries in some cases, we get not a whiff of this one. How does Doherty explain this strange absence? He doesn’t

 

All those who reject Doherty’s fantasy pseudo history have no trouble explaining it – Doherty’s “celestial Jesus” proto-Christianity leaves no trace in the historical record because it never existed. It’s a figment of his imagination created to avoid a historical Jesus. Occam’s Razor hacks Doherty’s thesis to pieces.

 

And that it's more or less glossed over because of the way it's all placed behind the Gospels so that while reading the Bible the reader is already conditioned to think of things like the nativity, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Plenty of scholars have devoted their entire careers to reading the Pauline texts without assuming anything from the gospels – it’s a key way of understanding what the Jesus sect was like in its first decades, since Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian texts and Paul was amongst the first converts. None of them have seen what Doherty claims he can “see” by this approach. And the few of them who are aware of Doherty’s thesis reject it completely. That’s because we do have references to a recent, historical and human Jesus in Paul. Paul says Jesus was born as a human, of a human mother and born a Jew (Galatians 4:4). He repeats that he had a "human nature" and that he was a human descendant of King David (Romans 1:3). He refers to teachings Jesus made during his earthly ministry on divorce (1Cor. 7:10), on preachers (1Cor. 9:14) and on the coming apocalypse (1Thess. 4:15). He mentions how he was executed by earthly rulers (1Cor. 2:8) and that he died and was buried (1Cor 15:3-4). And he says he had an earthly, physical brother called James who Paul himself had met (Galatians1:19). It takes some real acrobatics to pretend that these are not references to a recent, historical human being.

 

Who was Josephus's source for referring to Jesus, who was known as Christ, as a recent historical person? Was he pulling this from a written record that had documented the early 1st century Jesus, or was he pulling this from hearsay about religious beliefs at the time, the time of the late 1st century? Or did Josephus even mention this person from the outset?

We tend not to know the sources of information for most ancient historians about most people they mention, apart from the very rare times that a historian mentions where they are deriving their information from. So the mere fact that we don’t know Josephus’ source of information here is not sufficient to suspect he’s just repeating hearsay. What we do know is that one of his two mentions is of James and that Josephus was around 25 when James was executed. Given this execution led directly to the deposition of the high priest, this fact makes Josephus’ mention significant: as a member of a priestly family himself and a citizen of Jerusalem, this is an event that would have been massively important to the young Josephus. And Jerusalem was a relatively small town of around 80,000 people. So it’s not like he’s sitting at the other end of the Empire relating vague rumours and hearsay that he’s picked up. He’s talking about the brother of a man from his own small town who was involved in one of the most significant political events of his early career. By the standards of ancient source material, that’s almost as close as you can get.

 

Here's the first reason to suspect that this particular person may never have been historical in my own opinion - the fact that secular scholarship has down the line dismissed just about everything relevant about Jesus to the point of only leaving a few (you've already listed them) parts undisputed, just barely leaving a tid bit that keeps him historical but very mundane in comparison.

Then you seem to have misunderstood what those secular scholars are saying. They have not “dismissed” those other elements, they have simply said that we don’t have sufficient reason to say they are likely. They are definitely possible. In fact, substract the miracles and allow for a bit of exaggeration of the size of crowds etc and there’s actually not much in the synoptic gospels that I find implausible. But if we are going to say what is likely, the key elements I mentioned are the ones that have sufficient evidence of historical basis.

Here's the section where Earl starts getting into his alternative view of the James bit

As usual, Doherty tries the standard Mythicist way of getting around evidence that doesn’t fit their theory – assuming interpolation. His claim that the key phrase in Ant. XX.9.1 - “the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah” – is a Christian addition doesn’t work for two reasons, one textual and one linguistic. (i) The phrase in question is quoted by Origen in relation to this very passage in the mid third century AD. He quotes it not once, not twice but three times, in three places across two separate works. This is significant because Origen was writing while Christanity was still a small, marginal and persecuted cult – not in the position to be doctoring the text of Josephus.

 

Secondly, the construction of the sentence in question is very awkward and quite odd in the Greek – something like “the brother of that Jesus who was called Messiah, James by name”. This is an example of the casus pendens – a rare construction in Greek and a very awkward way of saying what Josephus is saying here. But while it’s rare and awkward in Greek, it’s common in Semitic languages like Hebrew and Aramaic. Josephus was a native Aramaic speaker and he admits his Greek is a bit rough in places. And it is – scholars have found a great many “Semiticisms” in his works – turns of phrase that are awkward or ungrammatical in Greek but mirror Aramaic constructions. We find uses of the casus pendens in many places in Josephus, including constructions exactly like this one . That this example exists because it came from the pen of Josephus himself makes sense. That it would somehow be the artefact of a Greek-speaking interpolators addition and just happen, by pure coincidence, to resemble one of Josephus’ stylistic quirks is really stretching things. But that’s what Doherty’s argument requires.

 

I'll respect your position taking and the consensus of secular scholarship to a certain degree just because it is the currently established view. But I have doubts nevertheless...

These days I tend to avoid discussions like this, because some people are so set on believing the Jesus Myth thesis that it’s become an article of faith for them. I get regular hate mail, along the lines of “I hope you die soon you ugly motherfucker” and just this week I got a comment on one of my Quora answers that said “I’m so sorry to hear your herpes has spread to your brain”. Frankly, I can’t be bothered wasting time arguing with fanatics. If you are open to look at why there is aconsensus on this stuff and why the Mythcists, for all their recent grandiose claims, are off on the lunar fringe at best, I’ll be happy to discuss things with you. There are a couple of others here, I must say, who are proving more of a waste of my time.

[Sextus]

Those are not cosmic powers.

What difference does the fact that people centuries later attributing "cosmic powers" to Jesus make? Try to focus. We are talking about what people attributed to him in the first decades after his death. Sai Baba was atrributed powers greater than most of those found in the synoptics even before he died. Vissarion is having healing mircales and turing water into wine attributed to him right now.

 

And Joseph Smith had access to technology many centuries more advanced than what the Roman Empire had so getting as much done in only 14 years isn't so tough for Smith

Still with this "getting so much done" nonsense. Getting what done? In the first 14 years after Jesus his sect got nothing much done other than surviving and having a handful of small communities in Syria and Greece and (perhaps) one tiny one in Rome. This amazes you somehow? Why?

 

 

The inflation of the story just a few short years after the death of Jesus is crazy.

No, it isn't. People attributed mircales and wonders to "great men" in the ancient world all the time. I have no idea why you're still flogging this poor horse. It's dead. Leave it alone.

[gall]

 

 

Is there any part of the gospels that are non-fiction?  The only thing I can think of it the author of Luke's botched attempt at giving his story an historical setting.  Well the Gospel of John points out that Christianity and Judaism do go their separate ways plus the gospels are always careful to include the big "prediction" that happened in 70 AD.

 

What are these points between those two extremes?

 

 

Looking for "non-fiction" in ancient works of polemics is not going to end up being very fruitful.  I'm not even sure what this question even means. 

 

As for things about Jesus that we can discern from the gospels which are highly likely to be historical, they are, in my opinion, few.  But they would include:

 

1.  He existed

2.  He was from Nazareth (and was probably born there)

3.  He was baptised by John and this was the turning point in his life

4.  He preached the coming apocalyptic cleansing of the earth and the kingship of Yahweh

5.  He was crucified by Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem in the 30s AD

 

Other than that, everything else is either supernatural embroidery or, at best, a maybe.

 

 

is there verifiable evidence of any of this? can anything be carbon dated is there anything physical at all other than OTHER peoples writings about the time in question?

 

I really don't give a crap but this nice list just screams for proof.

 

Does any of it hold water?

 

The demi-god miracle worker thing just shouts of bullshit. Comic marvel heroes are more believable. And better written as well

[Blood]

 

 

Is there any part of the gospels that are non-fiction?  The only thing I can think of it the author of Luke's botched attempt at giving his story an historical setting.  Well the Gospel of John points out that Christianity and Judaism do go their separate ways plus the gospels are always careful to include the big "prediction" that happened in 70 AD.

 

What are these points between those two extremes?

 

 

Looking for "non-fiction" in ancient works of polemics is not going to end up being very fruitful.  I'm not even sure what this question even means. 

 

As for things about Jesus that we can discern from the gospels which are highly likely to be historical, they are, in my opinion, few.  But they would include:

 

1.  He existed

2.  He was from Nazareth (and was probably born there)

3.  He was baptised by John and this was the turning point in his life

4.  He preached the coming apocalyptic cleansing of the earth and the kingship of Yahweh

5.  He was crucified by Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem in the 30s AD

 

Other than that, everything else is either supernatural embroidery or, at best, a maybe.

 

 

And we know those things to be true because ...? 

 

Oh yes. The "criterion of embarrassment." Much abused by the theologians pretending to be historians. Luke and Matthew are somehow "embarrassed" by a Nazareth birth, so they go to lengths to have the godman born in Bethlehem. So that must make the Nazareth birth true. A great way to establish facts about ancient figures. If Homer says a god was born somewhere, and a later writer goes out of his way to say the god was born somewhere else, then Homer must be right! 

 

And everything about the crucifixion makes good historical sense, other than the minor problems, like claiming to be the Messiah was not a capital offense in Judaism; that what godman supposedly preached was fluent with, not offensive to, Phariseeism; that the punishment for a capital offense was stoning, not crucifixion; that executions were a violation of the law during Passover, etc. Minor problems like that. 

 

In fact the whole outrageous idea that "the Jews" would order the crucifixion during Passover is what gives the whole plot away as a myth. Not just a harmless myth like the birth of Athena, but a truly horrifying myth very deliberately designed to portray the entire Jewish race as a collective Sacred Executioner. Jesus is the Paschal Lamb that has "been slain since the beginning of time." (As Justin Martyr helpfully tells us, the sacrificial lamb was hung on iron bars as if it were crucified.) The theologians personified the lamb into a human figure, whose appearance with Barabbas before the mob is a personified Levitical scapegoat ritual. The concept of vicarious redemption through blood atonement was already there. It just needed to be "personified" with a twist: the "lamb" and the "goat" were actually the Messiah, and "the Jews" were so blind they killed him. Thereby clearing the way for Gentiles to become God's new chosen people. 

 

Understood this way, it becomes clear that the desire of some "Judaized" Gentiles to have intellectual control over God and the Bible was the actual inspiration for the entire Jesus story. In the carefully conceived myth, "the Jews" play their destined role as the Sacred Executioner of the savior during the holiest day of the year. He becomes Messiah after his resurrection. By recognizing him as such, Gentiles now believe they have dominion over the formerly exclusively Jewish God concepts and the Bible. In this religious memetic rivalry with the Jews, they believe they have to destroy the Jews, with quill, not sword (though that would come later). 

 

That desire inspired the myth. No "historical Jesus" was needed or wanted to fulfill this desire. 

[mymistake]

 

Those are not cosmic powers.

What difference does the fact that people centuries later attributing "cosmic powers" to Jesus make?

 

If you think the synoptic gospels and all the works of Paul were not written until centuries after Jesus died that would solve the problem.  That would place the death of Jesus somewhere around 150 BCE.

 

 

 

Getting what done?

 

Spreading as far as Rome.

 

 

 

Jesus his sect got nothing much done other than surviving and having a handful of small communities in Syria and Greece and (perhaps) one tiny one in Rome. This amazes you somehow? Why?

 

If Jesus is only a crazy homeless guy who is not worth noticing how does he inspire a movement that spread all the way to Rome?

[miekko]

 

Understood this way, it becomes clear that the desire of some "Judaized" Gentiles to have intellectual control over God and the Bible was the actual inspiration for the entire Jesus story. In the carefully conceived myth, "the Jews" play their destined role as the Sacred Executioner of the savior during the holiest day of the year.

Wow, you're right! I forgot about Jesus being crucified on Yom Kippur!

[mymistake]

I never go much further than to say “he most likely existed”. But I think that is much more likely than any of the Mythicist alternatives, which are full of holes.

 

 

I'm not seeing the holes in "Jesus is fiction and certain passages from Josephus and Paul were altered after the fact".  It's a viable possibility since so much rewriting and book burning was going on.  It's not a slam dunk where we can close the case.  But the evidence for the positive claim that Jesus was real is very thin.  However even if James had a brother named Jesus the gospels are clearly myth.

[♦ ficino ♦]

Tim, do you have a view on the essays in Jesus, criteria, and the demise of authenticity / edited by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, London ; New York : T&T Clark, [2012]?  The contributors make strong attacks on all the so-called Criteria of Authenticity. To my untutored mind, the essay on the Criterion of Embarrassment by Rafael Rodriguez seemed especially successful.  R argues that the Criterion of Embarrassment generates circularity because we must assume that a given pericope contained something that the early church found "embarrassing;" we can't know what they thought was embarrassing. He thus maintains that we have no methodology by which we can detach historical "nuggets" from the rhetorically shaped narratives that are the gospels.  The gospels are not interpretations of brute facts we can identify;  the gospels are already entirely interpretations.  The upshot, in his view, seems to be that attempts to describe anything about the historical guy behind the traditions end up begging the question, because the researcher has no properties by which he can identify his quarry, which are not themselves already artifacts of the tradition.  

 

One might say, well, all ancient history writing was rhetorically shaped, sought to convey moralizing lessons (even Thucydides in his way), etc.  But then we get into the genre problem, if not also other ones, since the gospels display important differences from the writings of ancient historians.

 

Not being an expert, I say no more.

[florduh]

It occurs to me that nobody needs to prove they're myth. Someone needs to prove they're not.

[Sextus]

is there verifiable evidence of any of this? can anything be carbon dated is there anything physical at all other than OTHER peoples writings about the time in question?

If you've just raised the bar so high that you will only accept "verifiable evidence", which apparently consists of things like artefacts that can be "carbon dated" and rules out "other people's writings", then you've just made the whole discipline of ancient history unviable. Virtually our whole understanding of the pre-modern world consists of what we can work out from "other peoples writings". Even our understanding of archaeological artefacts comes substantially from the context we can give them from this analysis. So what you've just decided is the standard for "verifiable proof" effectively means that we can't do history at all. Does that strike you as rational?

 

 

I really don't give a crap but this nice list just screams for proof.

People who scream for proof (despite, apparently, not giving a crap) should probably avoid the study of pre-modern history altogether. I'm afraid historians don't deal in "proof". They work to the argument to the best explanation - i.e. a reasonable determination of what seems most likely. People who find that too subjective and demand "proof" should probably stick to maths or physics, which may be more to their taste.

 

Of course, I often find at about this point in these discussions that certain people start raising the bar of what they will accept about Jesus so high that they effectively invalidate the whole study of ancient history in the process. It seems their sole objective is to find a way to dismiss anything presented about Jesus as invalid, regardless of how absurd and unreasonable the standard of evidence being demanded is. In other words, they seem to be driven by an emotional need to find a way to maintain the stance that Jesus didn't exist, not matter how unreasonable their demands are. I prefer to consider these things rationally.

 

Does any of it hold water?

Yes. I can provide you with detailed arguments, supported by reference to wide swathes of relevant evidence, that shows that the conclusions I listed are the most likely interpretations. Because that's what historians do. But "verifiable proof"? See above.

 

The demi-god miracle worker thing just shouts of bullshit.

So does the idea that Augustus was conceived when Apollo visited his mother in the form of serpent. So does Julius Caesar being seen to ascend into heaven after his death. So does the story of Vespasian healing the blind and the lame. These "things" also shout of bullshit. Does this mean that these people are "myths" or does it mean something else?

[Sextus]

 

As for things about Jesus that we can discern from the gospels which are highly likely to be historical, they are, in my opinion, few.  But they would include:

 

1.  He existed

2.  He was from Nazareth (and was probably born there)

3.  He was baptised by John and this was the turning point in his life

4.  He preached the coming apocalyptic cleansing of the earth and the kingship of Yahweh

5.  He was crucified by Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem in the 30s AD

 

Other than that, everything else is either supernatural embroidery or, at best, a maybe.

 

And we know those things to be true because ...?

 

"Know"? "True"? Have you seen me use these words?  See above - the term I actually used was "highly likely to be historical". That's what historians do - determine the argument to the best explanation and set out what they believe to be most likely. If you want to "know" things to be "true" maybe you should have stuck to religion. The analysis of history isn't like that.

 

Oh yes. The "criterion of embarrassment." Much abused by the theologians pretending to be historians.

And much used by historians when working with biased and polemical textual evidence and trying to winkle some likely history out of them. For example, the other day I was reading some analysis of the campaigns of the late Roman general Flavius Stilicho. Fourth and fifth century Roman history has even more scanty sources than earlier periods, so historians have to make do with what they can get. This means that surviving panegyrics - formal public poems of praise - are one source of information. Given that they are stylised propaganda pieces, they aren't exactly objective pieces of journalism, but they have the benefit of being detailed and usualy contemporaneous. Working out the details of military campaigns from such sources is tricky, but occasionally they include information that strike historians as being clearly authentic - for example, when the panegyrist has to admit something that doesn't quite fit the general "he is brave, wise and all-conquering" theme of their poem. So when the panegyrist Olympiodorus has to make excuses for his hero Stilicho retreating from Illyria in 407 AD, this indicates that the Illyrian campaign didn't go quite as well as Olympiodorus was trying to make out. That's the "criterion of embarassment" and it makes perfect sense.

 

Luke and Matthew are somehow "embarrassed" by a Nazareth birth, so they go to lengths to have the godman born in Bethlehem. So that must make the Nazareth birth true. A great way to establish facts about ancient figures.

Well, a great way to determine what is likely from biased sources. Can you explain why the logic of the argument you sneer at here doesn't work? Jesus is consistently depicted as a Galilean and as being from Nazareth. Nazareth was an insignificant place and archaeology shows that in the early frist century it was a tiny peasant village of only a few farming families - certainly not the kind of place anyone would expect Yahweh's Anointed One to come from. John 7:41-42 even depicts people being sceptical about the claim that Jesus was the Messiah precisely because of his place of origin and has them noting that the Messiah was meant to come from Bethlehem, in accordance with an interpretation of Micah 5:2. So it's not surprising that we find both gMatt and gLuke telling stories about how a man who everyone knew was a Galilean from Nazareth was "actually" born in Bethlehem the way a proper Messiah was supposed to. Except they trip each other up by telling stories that are not only full of dubious material internally but are also mutually exclusive.

 

This leaves the Mythicist with a problem. If there was no historical Jesus then it is very hard to explain why an insignificant town like Nazareth is in the story at all. Why all the effort to get Jesus born in Bethlehem but keep Nazareth in the narrative? The most reasonable explanation is that it's Nazareth that is the historical element in these accounts - it is in the story because that is where he was from.

 

And everything about the crucifixion makes good historical sense, other than the minor problems ...

Those problems with the crucifixion narrative would be difficulties for someone who is trying to argue that the gospels accounts of the trial and crucifixion are wholly or even substantially historically accurate. But I'm not arguing that at all. I'm simply saying that the crucifixion was an awkward fact for the gospel writers on several fronts and that this indicates that it actually happened. Many of the problems that you note actually support this.

 

Paul acknowledges that preaching a Messiah that was crucified was difficult because it was "a stumbling block to the Jews and an absurdity to the gentiles" (1Cor 1:23). It was a stumbling block to the Jews for two reasons: (i) Deut 21:23 said anyone who was "hanged on the tree" was cursed and rejected by God and (ii) there was no Jewish tradition or expectation of the Messiah dying, let alone dying in such a humiliating way. So large parts of the gospel narrative are constructed to try to get around these objections and "show" that Jesus was the Messiah despite being crucified. A crucified saviour figure was an absurdity to Gentiles because crucifixion was the worst form of death, reserved for pirates, bandits, slaves and rebels against Rome. So, again, a lot of the trial and crucifixion narratives are designed to "show" that Jesus was wrongly accused of sedition against Rome, that it was all a conspiracy by "the Jews" and that Pilate was a reluctant and noble man forced to act against an innocent victim. If gMark, which shapes this whole approach, was written in the wake of the failure of the Jewish War, which seems likely, this also makes perfect sense.

 

So what we see with these narratives is a concerted attempt to present the awkward fact of the crucifixion in the best possible way - to overcome the theological objections of any Jewish audience and the political objections of any Romans. That makes sense if the crucifixion of Jesus was historical and unavoidable. But if there was no Jesus and therefore no crucifixion then this whole part of the story makes no sense at all. Why invent an executed Messiah when there this was the exact opposite of all Jewish expectations of the Messiah? And why invent a crucified saviour and then have to jump through hoops to explain such an "absurdity" and sell such a politically unpalatable fiction?

 

Understood this way, it becomes clear that the desire of some "Judaized" Gentiles to have intellectual control over God and the Bible was the actual inspiration for the entire Jesus story. In the carefully conceived myth, "the Jews" play their destined role as the Sacred Executioner of the savior during the holiest day of the year. He becomes Messiah after his resurrection. By recognizing him as such, Gentiles now believe they have dominion over the formerly exclusively Jewish God concepts and the Bible. In this religious memetic rivalry with the Jews, they believe they have to destroy the Jews, with quill, not sword (though that would come later).

See above. That "just so story" doesn't make sense.

[Sextus]

If you think the synoptic gospels and all the works of Paul were not written until centuries after Jesus died that would solve the problem.  That would place the death of Jesus somewhere around 150 BCE.

And what reason would we have to think this very strange thing?

 

 

Spreading as far as Rome.

And a sect that spread though the Jewish diaspora could not have spread to the large Jewish community in the capital of the known world because ... ?

 

 

If Jesus is only a crazy homeless guy who is not worth noticing how does he inspire a movement that spread all the way to Rome?

He was not worth noticing by aristocratic Greek and Roman historians at the other end of the Mediterranean. He was noticeable enough to some Jews in his vicinity. They kept believing in him after his death and this belief spread to other Jewish communities, including, after a few decades, the one in Rome. Why you find this inexplicable is itself totally inexplicable. You are flogging a horse that is well and truly dead. Leave it alone.

[Sextus]

I'm not seeing the holes in "Jesus is fiction and certain passages from Josephus and Paul were altered after the fact".

I see more holes in that than a slice of Swiss cheese. A fiction invented by who? When and why? Why invent a dying Messiah when there was no expectation of anything like that? Why invent a crucified saviour when that idea was utterly absurd to most people? Why invent a Messiah from Nazareth when he was supposed to be from Bethlehem? And what "passages from Josephus and Paul" were "altered after the fact"? Altered by who and why? And what actual evidence (textual, linguistic, stylistic) do you have for these "alterations"? Because I'm afraid "I need them to be altered otherwise my contrived story falls apart" won't cut it.

 

You have a lot of work to do if this vague thought bubble is going to get even close to viable, let alone parsimonious.

[Sextus]

Tim, do you have a view on the essays in Jesus, criteria, and the demise of authenticity / edited by Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, London ; New York : T&T Clark, [2012]?  The contributors make strong attacks on all the so-called Criteria of Authenticity. To my untutored mind, the essay on the Criterion of Embarrassment by Rafael Rodriguez seemed especially successful.  R argues that the Criterion of Embarrassment generates circularity because we must assume that a given pericope contained something that the early church found "embarrassing;" we can't know what they thought was embarrassing. He thus maintains that we have no methodology by which we can detach historical "nuggets" from the rhetorically shaped narratives that are the gospels.  The gospels are not interpretations of brute facts we can identify;  the gospels are already entirely interpretations.  The upshot, in his view, seems to be that attempts to describe anything about the historical guy behind the traditions end up begging the question, because the researcher has no properties by which he can identify his quarry, which are not themselves already artifacts of the tradition.  

 

One might say, well, all ancient history writing was rhetorically shaped, sought to convey moralizing lessons (even Thucydides in his way), etc.  But then we get into the genre problem, if not also other ones, since the gospels display important differences from the writings of ancient historians.

 

Not being an expert, I say no more.

The criticism of the way in which that criterion is sometimes applied is valid. But the idea that the criterion therefore can't be used at all is not. It gets used by historians all the time. See my response to Blood above for an example.

[Sextus]

It occurs to me that nobody needs to prove they're myth. Someone needs to prove they're not.

What exactly does "myth" mean here? Only a Biblical fundamentalist would reject the idea that at least some of the gospels are not literally true. So the question is not a simplistic binary one of "myth" versus "history". It's a much more complex one about how much of the gospel material is in any way historical, if any at all. Far too often in these debates one side tries to reduce things to simple black and white binary choices. Perhaps the high correlation between former fundamentalist Christians and born again Mythicists has something to do with that. Mythicism seems to appeal to many people who can only deal with "all or nothing" thinking, much like Christian fundamentalism.

[Blood]

There's a basic problem inherent to examining any ancient religion. We are trying to understand it through rational means ... but religion isn't rational. The religious imagination is not bound by rational rules. That puts us at a serious disadvantage, because we are bound by rules of argument and critical thinking. 

[Blood]

 

It occurs to me that nobody needs to prove they're myth. Someone needs to prove they're not.

What exactly does "myth" mean here? Only a Biblical fundamentalist would reject the idea that at least some of the gospels are not literally true. So the question is not a simplistic binary one of "myth" versus "history". It's a much more complex one about how much of the gospel material is in any way historical, if any at all. Far too often in these debates one side tries to reduce things to simple black and white binary choices. Perhaps the high correlation between former fundamentalist Christians and born again Mythicists has something to do with that. Mythicism seems to appeal to many people who can only deal with "all or nothing" thinking, much like Christian fundamentalism.

 

 

 

Reducing everything down to strawman caricatures is a guaranteed method to win any Internet debate. It solves nothing. It advances the argument not an inch. 

[Blood]

 

I'm not seeing the holes in "Jesus is fiction and certain passages from Josephus and Paul were altered after the fact".

I see more holes in that than a slice of Swiss cheese. A fiction invented by who? When and why? Why invent a dying Messiah when there was no expectation of anything like that? Why invent a crucified saviour when that idea was utterly absurd to most people? Why invent a Messiah from Nazareth when he was supposed to be from Bethlehem? And what "passages from Josephus and Paul" were "altered after the fact"? Altered by who and why? And what actual evidence (textual, linguistic, stylistic) do you have for these "alterations"? Because I'm afraid "I need them to be altered otherwise my contrived story falls apart" won't cut it.

 

You have a lot of work to do if this vague thought bubble is going to get even close to viable, let alone parsimonious.

 

 

I know this wasn't directed to me, but see my above comment on the basic irrationality of religion to answer all your questions. Religion doesn't need to "make sense," only to persuade, and persuasion to most people is accomplished through their emotions, not their intellect. The brilliance of the "Abrahamic" religions is that they have always had the capacity to persuade the common people as well as intellectuals (when appeals to emotion fail). 

 

There may not have been any expectation of a dying messiah (much less a "dying and rising Messiah") in Judaism. All the more reason to posit a Gentile origin for this un-Jewish concept. 

 

Why a crucified savior? Why not? It's not "absurd" if the people (according to the mythology) doing the crucifying were "the Jews" and recipients of God's recognition were the Gentiles. This is over-rationalizing the ancient religious imagination. ALL ancient savior figures are "absurd" in some way. People didn't join religious cults to discuss Euclidean Geometry. 

[Sextus]

 

What exactly does "myth" mean here? Only a Biblical fundamentalist would reject the idea that at least some of the gospels are not literally true. So the question is not a simplistic binary one of "myth" versus "history". It's a much more complex one about how much of the gospel material is in any way historical, if any at all. Far too often in these debates one side tries to reduce things to simple black and white binary choices. Perhaps the high correlation between former fundamentalist Christians and born again Mythicists has something to do with that. Mythicism seems to appeal to many people who can only deal with "all or nothing" thinking, much like Christian fundamentalism.

 

 

Reducing everything down to strawman caricatures is a guaranteed method to win any Internet debate. It solves nothing. It advances the argument not an inch.

 

Agreed. Though what has that got to do with what I said?

[mymistake]

 

If you think the synoptic gospels and all the works of Paul were not written until centuries after Jesus died that would solve the problem.  That would place the death of Jesus somewhere around 150 BCE.

And what reason would we have to think this very strange thing?

 

 

I didn't say that.  I don't understand your response.  Do you agree or disagree that the death of historical Jesus might have happened around 150 BCE?

 

 

And a sect that spread though the Jewish diaspora could not have spread to the large Jewish community in the capital of the known world because ... ?

 

I did not say that it could not have happened.  I simply find it more likely to have taken a longer time.  Certainly long enough that the people who knew a historical Jesus would not still be around to laugh at all the lies.

 

 

He was not worth noticing by aristocratic Greek and Roman historians at the other end of the Mediterranean. He was noticeable enough to some Jews in his vicinity. They kept believing in him after his death and this belief spread to other Jewish communities, including, after a few decades, the one in Rome.

 

Strange how the Jews in his vicinity while Jesus was alive were either completely illiterate or simply didn't bother with writing anything down.  And the Greek aristocrats who couldn't be bothered with Jesus when he was alive were so taken with the story later that they wrote the rest of the New Testament and even forged a few letters in the name of Paul for good measure.

 

Historic Jesus would have had to have been "just right".  He would have to be just popular enough to start one of the greatest religions in the world but just unpopular enough to not make him worth mentioning in any document during his life.  It is not impossible but I find it less likely.  Fictional characters can be anything and their popularity can grow in all sorts of directions.

 

.