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Are the gospels reliable historical documents? // YES
- Thread starter leroy
- Start date
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
There was no claim in my last post. And the deal was never for past posts.
But @joelr just gave several examples of you doing exactly what I accused you of. He even brought up the evidence that you ignored or denied. So if you want an example just scroll up a few posts.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
It was part of the deal from now on. It was not for past events. That was clear. Read the context. And of course his post of the past few hours count. It is an example of exactly what you asked for .
leroy
Well-Known Member
I
The Martyrdom of James, who was Called the Brother of the Lord.
Sorry but to me it's sounds unlikely that there was another James who also had a brother named Jesus , who also was stoned in Jerusalem in the ,60s because he did something that annoyed the jews leaders.
...
1 there is no evidence that the original text from Josephus refers to Jesus Ben Dameus (JBD)
2 there is no evidence that JBD ever had a brother named James)
3 the evidence that the passege from Josephus is not authentic is too adhoc by that logic you could dismiss any quote from any document.
4 I don't think you (or carrier) ever supported the claim that all the surviving copies come from the copy that was in the power of eusebious.
We know from Hegesippus that James was stoned and then killed with a club, so clemen Josephus and Hegesippus are consistent with each other.
The Martyrdom of James, who was Called the Brother of the Lord.
Sorry but to me it's sounds unlikely that there was another James who also had a brother named Jesus , who also was stoned in Jerusalem in the ,60s because he did something that annoyed the jews leaders.
...
1 there is no evidence that the original text from Josephus refers to Jesus Ben Dameus (JBD)
2 there is no evidence that JBD ever had a brother named James)
3 the evidence that the passege from Josephus is not authentic is too adhoc by that logic you could dismiss any quote from any document.
4 I don't think you (or carrier) ever supported the claim that all the surviving copies come from the copy that was in the power of eusebious.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Ok so the James in Paul was the apostle James?
No confusion? It was not until Carrier and other 2or:3 historians from the 21th century that "noticed" that Paul was not talking about a biological brother (or some other member of his family)
No historian prior to this century seemed to have noticed that the brother James in mark was not the same as the brother in Paul......so yes Marks descition to use the name James did caused confusion.
leroy
Well-Known Member
There are 3 issues
1 the fact that not even his brothers belived in Jesus is embarrassing. People would have said "why should I trust Jesus, if not even your brothers trust you?"......nowhere in the gospels did the brother repented, so it's unlikely to have been a "literary device" to make the story more dramatic
2 this makes the virgin birth less credible. If your brother was born from a virgin, you would likely conclude that there is something special about your brother.
3, they where minor and irrelevant characters that serv no theological purpose
These 3 points make the brothers likely to be authentic and real historical people. ..... Any author of a Myth with unlimited literary liberties would have done something more interesting with them (or just omit them)
In mythology characters tend to be there for a purpose, in historical documents you tend to have random character here and there that serve no purpose , the brothers of jesus are these type of character , they seem to be real people that simply happened to be there .
joelr
Well-Known Member
Uh, what?
"In the Antiquities of the Jews (Book 20, Chapter 9) first-century historian Josephus states that Jesus ben Damneus was made high priest after the previous high priest, Ananus son of Ananus, was removed from his position for executing James the brother of Jesus of Nazareth (James the Just).[2] This occurred after a large number of Jews complained and petitioned the king. Jesus ben Damneus himself was deposed less than a year later.
While the authenticity of some passages in Book 18 of Antiquities of the Jews has been subject to debate, ..."
Jesus son of Damneus - Wikipedia
So you do not even understand the argument?
Except for all the scholars who now believe that the Josephus passage was translated wrong and this James is that brother?
You keep saying things like "ad-hoc" when scholarship is explaining several reasons why the passage is now considered inauthentic. None of their reasons are "ad-hoc".
Another paper explaining the passage is not likely to be text written by Josephus and that accounts by
Hegesippus are far less reliable.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/473579
Do you actually think that when historians say our earliest copies of Josephus are from Eusebius and forward that they don't have evidence? Are you actually serious with this?
"The first one is founded upon the good transmission of our passage. Not only is it read in all known manuscripts of Josephus, but from the time of Eusebius down, it has been quoted by the Christian fathers. It is true the testimony of the manuscripts does not prove much; for Books 18-20 of the Antiquities are preserved by only three manuscripts, of which the oldest belongs to the eleventh century. But also the so-called epitome of the writings of Josephus, belonging to the ninth or tenth century, the Latin translation, and the so-called Hegesippus know our passage; while, on the contrary, the Christian fathers living before Eusebius do not seem to have any knowledge of it."
joelr
Well-Known Member
We don't know for sure who Paul was speaking of.
I don't see how an apostle and a brother is that confusing to the story? But confusing text is not new.
The confusion created by conflicting text goes far deeper than the James issue. If you listen to Bart Ehrman's debate against Mike Licona he explains there are textual differences that are of serious theological importance. Apologists have been wrestling with textual confusion for centuries. It's only recently that scholars are allowed to write about them freely.
When Thomas Thompson wrote this work in the 1970's, which is now standard and consensus, his PhD advisor (A Cardinal) refused him a degree and he had to move to Canada to work. Now he's a legend.
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-...19281&pd_rd_wg=0DylQ&pd_rd_i=1563383896&psc=1
Scholars are aware of all this stuff, they don't go running around telling everyone religions are all myth. Carrier is an exception because he isn't working for a University. Most funds are from donations and conservative rich folks do not want to hear about how much religion looks like myth.
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joelr
Well-Known Member
It just said no one believed him "not even his brethen", it's not a major plot point here. But at the end of the story it turns out he actually IS GOD? Denial by brethen is 100% a literary device. Especially when at the end of the story it turns out it's God people are denying. It's a story.
As Ehrman points out the gospel also appears to have several authors:
"have given evidence so far that the Gospel of John is not a single composition written by a single author sitting down to produce the account at a single time, but is made up of written sources that have all been edited together into the finished product. Here I lay out a bit more information about the sources that appear to lie behind this account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection."
and at the end he ignores his "brethen" when telling Mary to be taken care of by disciples.
Also John being non-historical is the least contraversial:
"The teachings of Jesus found in the synoptic gospels are very different from those recorded in John, and since the 19th century scholars have almost unanimously accepted that these Johannine discourses are less likely than the synoptic parables to be historical, and were likely written for theological purposes"
Gospel of John - Wikipedia
Again, as a biblical historian Bart Ehrman says:
"I have pointed out that our earliest Gospel, Mark, not only is lacking a story of the virgin birth but also tells a story that seems to run precisely counter to the idea that Jesus’ mother knew that his birth was miraculous, unlike the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is striking to note that even though these two later Gospels know about a virgin birth, our latest canonical Gospel, John, does not know about it. This was not a doctrine that everyone knew about – even toward the end of the first century."
The Virgin Birth and the Gospel of John | The Bart Ehrman Blog
this is more of a demonstration that each author was drawing from different stories.
Are you kidding me? Go to bible.com and get a sermon on why this parable is theologically important:
Lesson 18: Why People Reject Christ (John 3:19-21) | Bible.org
This theme is in every religion and cult. Turning away from darkness is the harder choice and you have to turn to the light. Judaism was especially obsessed with sin and "sin-force" and getting rid of that so you could get into the afterlife, hence the savior demigod and this version who gets rid of that.
John is suuuper preachy about all this.
John is so different that now even some of Christian scholarship is admitting it's a bit more of a "creation".
John went all out and actually created all sorts of new myths associated with Jesus that do not line up with the synoptics. An even bigger sign of myth.
"One of the most striking features of the Fourth Gospel is the way in which some of the distinctively Johannine themes stand in such stark contrast with the other early Christian writings that we have examined so far. Even to the casual reader, the Fourth Gospel may seem somewhat different from the other three within the canon. Nowhere in the other Gospels is Jesus said to be the Word of God, or the creator of the universe, or the equal of God, or the one sent from heaven and soon to return. Nowhere else does Jesus claim that to see him is to see the Father, that to hear him is to hear the Father, and that to reject him is to reject the Father."
But if you are making a point that all of the gospels having brothers in the story means something then we go back to Mark who created an Earthly narrative for Jesus and wanted to include a family and events on Earth. You can't say "look he has brothers so it's a real story"? You can, but then you have to examine ALL the markers of myth vs non-myth. So first while not markers of myth, brothers are actually in myths. But the markers of myth are extraordinary. Rank-Ragalin scale, literary devices, copies narratives from OT and other stories, similarities to other religions and the OT is all kinds of myth. Mesopotamian, afterlife/souls belonging in heaven are Persian as is resurrection, end of world, virgin born messiahs who save humanity.
You can't just say having brothers means it's historical?
Wow, is that right?
Krishna's foster parents at Vrindavana were Nanda and Yashoda, his sister is Subhadra, and his brother Balarama. Krishna's favourite wife was Radha, with whom he had a son Pradyumna and daughter Carumati,
Krishna
Siblings
Balarama (brother) Subhadra (sister) Yogmaya (sister)
Children
Pradyumna, Samba, Bhanu and various other children
Speaking of John, this sounds kind of familiar...
"Thus the story of Krishna contains a double concealment - Krishna is both a god disguised as a mortal and a prince disguised as a commoner. Accordingly, the myths contain many metaphors of disguise, such as a spark within a pile of ashes or a mighty sword in its scabbard, and these hint at Krishna's dual purpose as the punisher of human deeds but also as a bringer of enlightenment."
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leroy
Well-Known Member
No please explain and develope the argument ......... becasue the wiki article that you are quoting supports my view.
from the article that you quoted
All scholars? how many 2, 3?.........most scholars claim that the passage is authentic
I find it perplexing that you reject that James was the brother of Jesus despite all the evidnce (Paul, gospels, acts, Josephus, church fathers etc.)…. But you accept that Jesus of Ben Damneous had a brother named James with virtually zero evidence. ,…. If you have all sorts of creative excuses and explanations to deny that Jesus had a brother, why not using the same level of creativity when in comes to the brother of Jesus of Ben Damneous?
ok of all the 5 reasons that Career provides, whcih do you do find more convincing? (expalin with your own words why you think is good evidnece)
the historian claims that allllllllllllllll the copies that we have today come from Eusebius, I find it hard to belive, ...... is there any evidnece for that?
is that quote related to the TF or related to the "james quote"...................
So according to you, Homer's Iliad was historically accurate since out of King Priam's 80+ children, many of them were mentioned by name, although majority of them were only minor characters.
That would make you a polytheist since you believe that the Greek Gods exist and were being accurately depicted in the Homer's
historical document called, Iliad. You're the first Christian that I know of who believes in the Greek Gods. I guess you proved those atheists wrong that says Christians don't believe in other religions.
leroy
Well-Known Member
You don’t seem to understand the argument , 2 questions
1 What was the purpose of the author of the myth of Krishna?
2 does the existence or role of the brothers goes against that goal?
In the case of the gospels the goal of the author was to convince everybody that Jesus is the messiah………. The fact that Jesus had brothers and that they didn’t believed in him goes against that goal…do you have anything analogous with Krishna?
leroy
Well-Known Member
What was the purpose of homer? Does mentioning 80+ children went against such purpose?.................in the case of the gospels having brothers that rejected Christ was against the purpose of the authors of the Gospels (the purpose being convince everybody that Jesus is the Messiah)
This is how the criteria of embarrassment works
Supposedly to depict a historical event, just like the purpose of the gospels. And the Iliad fits your criteria for historical accuracy is......
If you have a problem with that, then go take it up with Leroy, because I'm just going off of what he said.
Agreed with Leroy or no?
leroy
Well-Known Member
It’s a probabilistic argument, characters that are “just there” in the story are more likely to be real historical characters, than characters that are “too convinient to be true”If you have a problem with that, then go take it up with Leroy, because I'm just going off of what he said.
Agreed with Leroy or no?
joelr
Well-Known Member
As if a few scholars making progress is a bad thing. The historians doing the work are now finding Antiquities to be more likely a mis-translation. We know it's dated no earlier than 230 A.D. and several scholars who have done recent work all agree on this.
As Carrier points out -
"1. New Findings
In my talk I point out how recent publications by myself (Richard Carrier), Louis Feldman, G.J. Goldberg, Paul Hopper, Ken Olson, and Alice Whealey shed new light on what happened, altering what we should conclude about what Josephus originally wrote. No expert opinion on the authenticity of either passage is citeable, if it isn’t informed by their published research on it over the last ten years.
Among the things we have confirmed now is that all surviving manuscripts of the Antiquities derive from the last manuscript of it produced at the Christian library of Caesarea between 220 and 320 A.D. , the same manuscript used and quoted by Eusebius, the first Christian in history to notice either passage being in the Antiquities of Josephus. That means we have no access to any earlier version of the text (we do not know what the text looked like prior to 230 A.D.), and we have access to no version of the text untouched by Eusebius (no other manuscript in any other library ever on earth produced any copies that survive to today). That must be taken into account.
The latest research collectively establishes that both references to Jesus were probably added to the manuscripts of Josephus at the Library of Caesarea after their first custodian, Origen—who had no knowledge of either passage—but by the time of their last custodian, Eusebius—who is the first to find them there. The long passage (the Testimonium Flavianum) was almost certainly added deliberately; the later passage about James probably had the phrase “the one called Christ” (just three words in Greek) added to it accidentally, and was not originally about the Christian James, but someone else"
Previous scholars made assumptions (literally about every aspect of scriptures) and more recent scholars are actually looking into the historicity and are finding these assumptions do not hold.
At best it's a mention of James from 220A.D. Which means the author absolutely was familiar with gospel myths, was likely Christian and wanted to give historicity to the stories. We have already seen many examples of this behavior. It's known with the TF as well as the fake acts and all 36 other gospels that didn't make the cut.
This late mention of a gospel story is no more evidence of supernatural beings than a late mention of Mithras.
A bunch of non-evidence does not equal evidence. I see this so often with religious people.
Paul - mentions an apostle named James
Gospels - obvious fiction
Acts - known fiction (except for the authentic 7 which are accepted to be a travel narrative taken from Homer)
Josephus - TF is completely debunked as a historical source for Jesus
Church Fathers - known to be pushing the fiction in the gospels as history. Every religion/cult has "fathers" who proclaim the scripture they support is literal? A "church father" is just a religious person from way after the events supposedly happened. You actually think that is a source? That is literally just a member of the religion who is taking the gospels on faith?
These are not creative excuses, it's actual historicity. I didn't accept that JBD had a brother James. I said the evidence is pointing to the fact that the passage was not about the gospel Jesus. Your "evidence" is centuries later edited by people who took the stories literal and wanted to push the movement.
I don't know what you are talking about. First Carrier completely destroys the TF and cites several other scholars then gets into the 2nd mention of James after going over papers by Hopper, Olsen and Goldberg.
There are 9 bullet points against the 2nd James mention and they all make sense. I don't know why you would make an odd request for my words when you have the actual PhD who's done the latest Jesus historicity study giving you a free article?
Documents were not photocopied back then. They were re-written. The copy from 2-3AD was already re-written countless times, scribal errors are common and the text doesn't match Josephus. The latest scholarship is clear. Wishful thinking isn't going to help. We cannot demonstrate brothers of demi-gods from a 3rd century passage written by fundamentalists.
- This James passage was unknown to Origen (despite his explicit search of Josephus for Jesus material in his answer to Celsus). All claims to the contrary until now have been mistaken on that point.
- Because in fact, it’s objectively evident that Origen mistook a story about James in Hegesippus as being in Josephus (a kind of mistake I document Origen sometimes made).
- All other accounts of the death of James the brother of Jesus do not match this one in Josephus; they therefore had no knowledge of this passage being about the Christian James (Eusebius is the first author to ever think so; and the first to ever quote it from Josephus).
- We know Acts used Josephus as a source text for historical color, yet the author of Acts never noticed this passage as being about Jesus Christ (which is inexplicable, given that if it was, then it shows Jews being punished for persecuting Christians, exactly the kind of thing the author of Acts strove to include; instead, Acts never mentions this James even being martyred).
- If Josephus had written this passage as about the persecution of Christians, he would have explained things, as is his style consistently in all his historical writing; only a Christian would just assume all those obscure things were already known to the reader (like what a “Christ” was; that James was a Christian; that Jews sought to kill Christians; and why, we must then suppose, the Jewish elite and Roman authorities opposed the killing of James if he was a Christian).
- The words tou legomenou christou, “the [one] called Christ,” is for these and many other reasons most likely a marginal note (by Origen or Pamphilus, or another scribe or scholar in the same Library of Caesarea), expressing belief rather than fact (possibly trying to find the passage Origen claimed he’d seen here but mistakenly saw instead in Hegesippus).
- That marginal note was then accidentally interpolated into the manuscript produced or used by Eusebius (which would have been a copy of the one used by Origen), a very common form of scribal error.
Possibly by replacing ton tou damnaiou, “the son of Damneus,” in the same place. That same line is repeated at the end of the story. Repetition of that identical phrase a few lines after may have led a scribe to suspect the marginal note was correcting a dittograph (an accidental duplication caused by a previous scribe skipping some lines by mistake, starting at the “wrong” Jesus in the story). But more likely, that duplication is exactly what Josephus meant: Ananus is punished for killing the brother of Jesus ben Damneus by being deposed and replaced by Jesus ben Damneus.
Wiki has the earliest manuscripts from the 11th century. But Carrier being an applied PhD in biblical historicity may have better sources. Do you have any idea how tiring this is? You will never hear "well Einstein came up with special relativity but is there any evidence for it?" Only with religion will people take scholars and act like they toss a coin and rub 2 sticks together to find out facts.
Antiquities is the mention of James and Jesus DB. It's earliest form is from the 11th century. As usual everything related to this is held together by assumptions.
The earliest Greek manuscript of Books 11–20 of the Antiquities dates from the eleventh century,[9] the Ambrosianus 370 (F 128); preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. However, the manuscript tradition is complex and many manuscripts are incomplete.[10]
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joelr
Well-Known Member
Starting out with the obvious, Carrier explains that Jesus is the new updated Moses. Well, guess what:
"(Num 11:35—16:16) Moses is challenged by Miriam and Aaron both with regard to his marital choice and to his superior prophetic status."
Yes Moses also has his divinity challenged by siblings. So maybe when you come up with a theory like "wow this story must be true or why else would it be written that a sibling challenged a demigod?" You could fact check it against the original story?
But family structure is also part of several theological teachings:
"
n the narrative of the Synoptic Gospels, and of the Gospel of Thomas, when Jesus' mother and adelphoi are outside the house that Jesus is teaching in, Jesus tells the crowd that whoever does what God wills would constitute his mother and adelphoi. According to Kilgallen, Jesus' answer was a way of underlining that his life had changed to the degree that his family were far less important than those that he teaches about the Kingdom of God. The Gospel of John states that Jesus' adelphoi did not believe in him, because he would not perform miracles with them at the Feast of Tabernacles.
Some scholars have suggested the portrayal in the Gospel of Mark of the initial rejection of Jesus by his family may be related to the tension between Paul and Jewish Christians, who – according to them – held Jesus' family in high regard, for example at the Council of Jerusalem.[62][63][64][65][page needed][66][page needed]
Karl Keating says that in Jewish culture younger brothers (blood siblings) never rebuked, or even advised, their elders, for it was considered great disrespect to do so;[67] but in Mark 3:21, also in John 7:3–4, Jesus' brothers are shown doing that."
The rejection of Jesus has all kinds of storytelling value as outlined here:
Rejection of Jesus - Wikipedia
On another side we can look at some known fiction that also has random siblings - The apocryphal History of Joseph the Carpenter, written in the 5th century and framed as a biography of Joseph dictated by Jesus, describes how Joseph had with his first wife four sons and two daughters. His sons' names were Judas, Justus, James, and Simon, and the names of the two daughters were Assia and Lydia. Years after his first wife died, he took Mary.[42] Therefore, the brothers of Jesus would be the children of Joseph by his first wife.
So we can see that having siblings, being a biography and being written as a true history does not mean it's real.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Cool then we can use probabilities with other concepts. Like heaven, souls and did Yahweh dictate these concepts to prophets in the Persian period or maybe the prophets got the ideas from somewhere else? Like maybe, what history tells us about people who were invading the Hebrew people....
"During the period of the Second Temple (c. 515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire.[32] Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them.[32] Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.[33][34] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[34] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology.[34] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[34] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[32] The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC). Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead."