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How would an Historical JC be Defined?

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I'm obviously not rejecting material on the basis of its religious nature. I asked if Augustus was without contemporaries, I asked if the authors of his biographies were unknown, if there were artifacts, if we knew where his biographies came from. The same questions apply to Jesus who by the way was without contemporaries

The issue is not whether he had contemporaries. About 99.9% of the people who lived during the first century have no historical record at all (if you don't believe this, unlike Carrier's uses of Bayes' theorem, you can actually use Bayesian statistical analysis here). They had contemporaries.

It's whether or not contemporaries wrote about them, or whether or not anybody did ever, and if so how and in what way and what can we say about that?

The problem with those who could care less about classical studies or ancient history in general but care about the historical Jesus is that with few exceptions they have absolutely no clue what kind of evidence there is in general, and therefore no basis for comparison, no context, just what they understand in general about "history" and an extremely biased exposure to historical Jesus studies.

We have a bunch of letters supposedly written by Plato. Most scholars believe at least several are not actually by him, and many believe none are. We have tons of such literature, including some in the NT. So although we have lots and lots of texts claiming to be written by someone they aren't, you're concerned about documents that don't claim to be written by anyone? Not how scholars determine how likely it is that an author claiming to be someone really is that person? Or how we know whether anything they write is fictional? Or non-fictional?

Where does the idea come from that I am dismissing literature based on whether or not it is religious?

Probably it was from trying to make sense of a question that was clearly meaningless. If a person existed, they had contemporaries.
 
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outhouse

Atheistically
Historian Richard Carrier claims that Earl Doherty presents a reasonable case for a mythical Jesus in Doherty's book, The Jesus Puzzle, Did Christianity begin with a mythical Christ?


Earl makes his claim on very shaky ground not followed by most scholars.

he makes the claim that Paul viewed Jesus as having a celestial resurrection, and that he only lived in heaven as a deity, never a human being.

Carrier follows part of this and then relies heavily on the statement Paul gets no information from man, but only through revelation. Its so weak its laughable. What can Paul say? "While I was out murdering the original sect I learned all about Jesus teachings and had a change of heart"???????????? No he cannot.

The thing about Paul is that he wanted desperately to be a real apostle to a living man that died before his time.


I have been talking with Earl, and when faced with passages that show Paul viewed Jesus as flesh and blood human, and he was not celestial at all, he can no longer say a word in his own defense. Its a valiant effort and at least he tried to produce a complete replacement hypothesis. Its just weak as hell.
 

outhouse

Atheistically
you are left with a pacifist Jesus of which there is no non-Xian historical record.


Not really, Its my opinion that is as much mythology as the theology and miracles.


No other man has ever been written about so much in detail. Doesn't mean the writing is accurate or devoid of mythology, mistakes, fiction and yes real history although fuzzy.


There are many possible versions of a plausible Jesus within the writing were left with from multiple unknown authors
 

Copernicus

Industrial Strength Linguist
And Bart Erhman in his book Did Jesus Exist refuted Doherty. In fact, most historians and scholars reject the Christ-myth idea.
It is also worth reading Carrier's stinging critique of that book: Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic. Ehrman made a lot of factual errors, not the least of which was his claim that Carrier was a "classicist", not a "historian." All of Carrier's degrees are in Ancient History.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
It is also worth reading Carrier's stinging critique of that book: Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic. Ehrman made a lot of factual errors, not the least of which was his claim that Carrier was a "classicist", not a "historian." All of Carrier's degrees are in Ancient History.
It is also irrelevant:

"One of the mistakes I make in the book I should state up front, because Carrier found it particularly offensive. I indicated in the book that Carrier’s degree was in Classics. I was wrong about that. His PhD is in Ancient History. I am not sure where I got the wrong impression he was a classicist; I think when I first heard of him I was told that he worked in ancient history and classics, and the “classics” part just stuck with me, possibly because I have always revered the field. In any event, I apologize for the mistake. His degree is in Ancient History, although he is trained as well in classics.
Contrary to what Carrier suggests, this mistake was not some kind of plot on my part, in his words: “a deliberate attempt to diminish my qualifications by misrepresentation I frankly don’t know why a classicist is less competent to talk about the ancient world of Rome than an ancient historian is, since most Romanists I know are in fact Classicists; and it seems odd that Carrier wants to insist that he is not “just a classicist.” My classicist friends would probably not appreciate knowing that they were “just” that. But in any event, it was an honest to goodness mistake, for which I apologize." (source)

Carrier's degrees are fairly unique, not because he's special but because most people who are interested in ancient history get degrees in classics or in near eastern studies or in other degrees because there just aren't that many PhD programs in "ancient history". In fact, most of the courses Carrier took at Columbia were from the classics department because his degree is an interdisciplinary one that is mainly focused on classics.
 

Copernicus

Industrial Strength Linguist
It is also irrelevant:

"One of the mistakes I make in the book I should state up front, because Carrier found it particularly offensive. I indicated in the book that Carrier’s degree was in Classics. I was wrong about that. His PhD is in Ancient History. I am not sure where I got the wrong impression he was a classicist; I think when I first heard of him I was told that he worked in ancient history and classics, and the “classics” part just stuck with me, possibly because I have always revered the field. In any event, I apologize for the mistake. His degree is in Ancient History, although he is trained as well in classics.
Contrary to what Carrier suggests, this mistake was not some kind of plot on my part, in his words: “a deliberate attempt to diminish my qualifications by misrepresentation.” I frankly don’t know why a classicist is less competent to talk about the ancient world of Rome than an ancient historian is, since most Romanists I know are in fact Classicists; and it seems odd that Carrier wants to insist that he is not “just a classicist.” My classicist friends would probably not appreciate knowing that they were “just” that. But in any event, it was an honest to goodness mistake, for which I apologize." (source)

Carrier's degrees are fairly unique, not because he's special but because most people who are interested in ancient history get degrees in classics or in near eastern studies or in other degrees because there just aren't that many PhD programs in "ancient history". In fact, most of the courses Carrier took at Columbia were from the classics department because his degree is an interdisciplinary one that is mainly focused on classics.
The Classics Department at Columbia was not even in the same building as the Ancient History Department. He only had a specialization in Classics as an undergraduate. But that was really a minor part of Carrier's critique, and his complaint was that this kind of sloppiness was indicative of the entire work by Ehrman. Ehrman knew him and could simply have checked his facts with the source, but he never bothered. Many of the other details that Carrier criticized were more errors of laziness than anything else. He had expected Ehrman to do a more extensive critique of the really bad mythicist literature (e.g. Freke and Gandy), but Ehrman appears to have done very little of that sort of detailed scholarly research. I am currently working through the Ehrman book (because I'm not going to take Carrier's review at face value), and I am quite disappointed by it. I do get the sense that Ehrman is guilty of exactly the same kind of sloppiness that he criticizes mythicists of. He keeps promising to deliver positive evidence for HJ, but most of his book is just the same old tired argument that "most real scholars reject mythicism" and not enough substantive argument. The reality is that Ehrman himself is a biblical scholar, not really a historian, yet he accuses mythicists of lacking the proper credentials to evaluate the historical facts.
 
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LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
It is also worth reading Carrier's stinging critique
Carrier's "stinging critique" is just the typical response he has to any challenge. Have you read his book? Have you seen how he conflated Bayes' theorem with Bayesian inference? I'm not sure how much computational linguistics you've done or are familiar with, but if you are familiar with how Bayesian models are used in machine learning and you read his book, can you honestly tell me that didn't bother you? Because I was seriously disappointed. He references Jeffreys and others whose work on both probability theory and epistemic justification were among the best out there and reduces them to garbage by equating them to a poorly bastardized version of the "classical" theorem and Bayesian models. He has a "proof" in the book on what one can say based on Bayes' theorem, but he isn't using Bayes' theorem because he can't. Moreover, one of the books he cites as an example of his "for those who really want to get into the "advanced" stuff" (that's not an actual quote, but it was something like that) he references a book which shows that two people using the exact same Bayesian model but with different opinions will end up (shockingly) with different conclusions. Had he read the book he cites (or understood it), it would be clear that he cannot use "Bayes' Theorem" to do anything more than justify what he wanted to from the start. And if he did understand, then that's just worse, because it makes him a fraud.

I spent forever waiting for that book to come out (only to find out it was the prequel to the one I really wanted to read) and instead of a rational, skeptical analysis of the data from another outsider of which there are only so many, we get high school level math to dress up historiography in the clothes of mathematical analysis all to form...crap.

I lost just about all respect for Carrier after Proving History.
 
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Copernicus

Industrial Strength Linguist
Carrier's "stinging critique" is just the typical response he has to any challenge. Have you read his book? Have you seen how he conflated Bayes' theorem with Bayesian inference? I'm not sure how much computational linguistics you've done or are familiar with, but if you are familiar with how Bayesian models are used in machine learning and you read his book, can you honestly tell me that didn't bother you? Because I was seriously disappointed. He references Jeffreys and others whose work on both probability theory and epistemic justification were among the best out there and reduces them to garbage by equating them to a poorly bastardized version of the "classical" theorem and Bayesian models. He has a "proof" in the book on what one can say based on Bayes' theorem, but he isn't using Bayes' theorem because he can't. Moreover, one of the books he cites as an example of his "for those who really want to get into the "advanced" stuff" (that's not an actual quote, but it was something like that) he references a book which shows that two people using the exact same Bayesian model but with different opinions will end up (shockingly) with different conclusions. Had he read the book he cites (or understood it), it would be clear that he cannot use "Bayes' Theorem" to do anything more than justify what he wanted to from the start. And if he did understand, then that's just worse, because it makes him a fraud.

I spent forever waiting for that book to come out (only to find out it was the prequel to the one I really wanted to read) and instead of a rational, skeptical analysis of the data from another outsider of which there are only so many, we get high school level math to dress up historiography in the clothes of mathematical analysis all to form...crap.

I lost just about all respect for Carrier after Proving History.
I haven't read the book, so I have no opinion of it. However, I have heard of his Bayesian nonsense, and I agree with you that it is utter nonsense. He is a historian, not a mathematician or statistician, so I don't judge him by that. I think that he behaves in a way that I saw a great many times when I was an assistant professor at Columbia--lots of nitpicking that gets blown out of all proportion. In my experience, academic disputes can get really nasty and personal in that way. So he is over the top in some of the things he says about Ehrman. However, if you ignore some of the academic barnyard pettiness, he does make some very good points about the flaws in Ehrman's book. His own book may well be similarly flawed, but I do think that he knows and understands Roman history better than Ehrman does. I agree with Ehrman that, if Jesus existed, he was just an ordinary man who became a martyr, although I don't buy into all of the things that Ehrman says about him. That is, I just don't think that there is enough credibility in the gospel-based arguments to warrant his amount of confidence in historicity. I buy Carrier's point that most historical scholars simply avoid any critical examination of the story, given the career-ending potential for getting on the wrong side of popular belief. Ehrman engages in the same kind of mythicist-bashing that virtually guarantees no career-minded historian is going to approach the issue objectively. So I waver between the opinion that there was no HJ and there might well have been, but we lack any real information on the events in the life of that person.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
However, if you ignore some of the academic barnyard pettiness, he does make some very good points about the flaws in Ehrman's book.

Like all of his books which are intended for the general audience, Ehrman's book was almost as bad as Carrier's. I've outlined elsewhere how Ehrman went from communicating with the general public to making money by rehashing his actual scholarship in sensationalist ways once he figured out how that makes real money. But I actually regained some respect for him after he wrote this book, not because there is anything to it per se, but because his fans are almost entirely composed of those who harbor a certain distaste for Christianity. And among them are numerous mythicists. By writing this book, he alienated a large number of his fans. I read his book and there are far better books intended for the general public and on that subject, so my increased opinion has nothing to do with the quality of his scholarship (as it isn't there). It has to do with integrity, and the willingness to publish something which many of his fans would shun him for (and believe me, apart from blogs the one other forum I belonged to consisted of the mythicist crowd and they trashed him for this and despaired at how the mighty have fallen, as if he were Anthony Flew at the end).

Ehrman's book was intended for people whose knowledge about the historical Jesus comes from Templar Revelations, Early Doherty, Wells, or even The Da Vinci Code. If memory serves, you were disappointed by A Universe from Nothing because it did not do what it ought: simplify for those who would rather be more productive than spend the time it takes to learn the technical aspects of a field which has nothing to do with their own. Ehrman's book was of this type. His first book on the historical Jesus wasn't much better. But the point is it isn't intended to represent the current state of the field or even present Ehrman's own views. It was intended for a specific type of person and for a specific reason.


His own book may well be similarly flawed, but I do think that he knows and understands Roman history better than Ehrman does.

Are you judging this using Ehrman's popular books or his journal submissions, monographs, contributions to volumes, etc.? Because that makes quite a bit of difference.

I buy Carrier's point that most historical scholars simply avoid any critical examination of the story, given the career-ending potential for getting on the wrong side of popular belief.
Carrier's book was self-published because people gave him money, not because he had any fellowship or similar typical means. He received monetary support, invitations to speak for which he was paid, and more when most grad students like him have to work second jobs tutoring undergrads and things like that. He has degrees in history but his career is built on selling to the general public not contributing to scholarship.

I've seen journalists who made tons of money writing "history" about Jesus. Frazer's dying and resurrecting god has returned to make money for all kinds of people without credentials. They all share one thing at least in common: they don't attempt to address scholarship in any way.

Doherty has less credentials than I do when it comes to this subject, but I can't publish a book about the historical Jesus unless I want to make sensationalist claims. Because for the rest, we have over 10,000+ post-docs who need to publish something that can pass actual scrutiny and would kill to write something as easily trashed as Doherty's book.

I worked within walking distance of the oldest theological school in this country. And I have met with and talked to some of the faculty, and I know what some previous distinguished faculty from there (and elsewhere) have published about Jesus over the past several decades. If you sign up to be a professor at a university which requires faculty to believe in a particular creed, then you will risk your job if you publish certain things. But that is not the way that the field works, because that is not the case with most universities.


Ehrman engages in the same kind of mythicist-bashing that virtually guarantees no career-minded historian is going to approach the issue objectively.
They already have (to the extent "objectivity" is possible). Loveday Alexander and Akenson are the only completely non-biblical studies related specialists that spring to mind, but there are others. Ronald Hutton definitely mentions Jesus but (like Michael Grant) doesn't bother getting into any details.

Don't judge the field by Ehrman's work (unless you are interested in making money off of the Jesus market).

EDIT: if I sound overly bitter, I apologize. It has to do in part with having to move as a grad student who couldn't afford to live where I did because unlike Carrier, I didn't make a career out of something tangentially related to my field or by showing up at various atheist gatherings and getting paid that which has nothing to do with my field (as he did). Also, I was really looking forward to his book, and the bitter disappointment has made me...well, bitter.
 
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steeltoes

Junior member
Even though many or even most modern scholars think JC was an historical person, few of them believe he performed miracles or was resurrected from the dead. If we strip away all of the hyperbolic content from the JC in the gospels, there is a possibility Jesus existed as a mortal man. Surely few or none among secular Xian scholars believe in the miracle-working JC.

So when scholars say they believe they believe in an historical JC, we must ask exactly what they mean by an historical JC.

Until we can properly define our terms, we shall have endless misunderstandings and ambiguities in our discussions.

I guess if we stripped away Harry Potter and Jesus of their magical abilities we could view them as ordinary, but why the bother? I guess in the case of Jesus there is this overwhelming need by some to declare he was real and that he really and truly o walked the earth. Afterall, he was the redeemer of all of mankind, we could hardly make do without him.:rolleyes:
 

roger1440

I do stuff
But from your POV, would that account include his miracles, resurrection and ascent into heaven?
Yes. To investigate the historical Jesus a historian would need a starting point. Nearly everyone who knows of Jesus knows him from the Bible. Therefore the starting point for an investigation of the historical Jesus would start from the Bible. A prerequisite would include a study of the Bible. A historian would have to answer several questions. What is the Bible? Who wrote the Bible? What is the purpose of the Bible? Why were some Gospels not included in the Bible? What is the style of writing of the Bible? Are the stories in the Bible to be taken literality or as allegory, are they metaphors? When was the Bible written? Who is or was the intended audience of the Bible?

Some stories and concepts in the Bible are to be interpreted literally others as allegory or symbolically. The problem is how to differentiate between the two. An example would be the miracles of Jesus. How does one interpret Jesus giving sight to the blind? The literal interpretation would be Jesus healed the eyes of people in order that they can see and not stumble. Interpreted as allegory it might mean Jesus healed those who were spiritually blind. Before Jesus healed them, they had walked in darkness and stumbled.

Conservatives, fundamentalists and/or literalists would argue that I’m explaining away Jesus’s miracles. I would have to disagree. There is no greater miracle then to lead someone to God. Only God can do this. God calls all of us according to the Bible, but only few are willing to listen.

The Bible is written on at least two levels of interpretation. From the surface it is interpreted as literal. Beneath that there is an undercurrent of allegory and mysticism that flows though out the entire book. In reference to Jewish scripture the Cabalists would be in agreement with me.
 

Copernicus

Industrial Strength Linguist
Like all of his books which are intended for the general audience, Ehrman's book was almost as bad as Carrier's. I've outlined elsewhere how Ehrman went from communicating with the general public to making money by rehashing his actual scholarship in sensationalist ways once he figured out how that makes real money...
I actually have a great deal of respect for those who popularize the technical literature, and I'm not really concerned that they do it for money. I do things for money, too. Ehrman has very liberal ideas when it comes to religion. He is a self-admitted lapsed Christian, so I don't think he is being deceptive or shallow in writing materials that appeal to religious skeptics. However, bear in mind that his day job is still with students and colleagues who do not necessarily like his large following. So you can see him as being courageous in trashing the HJ crowd, but one could also see it as repairing bridges that were on the verge of collapse. The man is still a professor in a religion department.

Are you judging this using Ehrman's popular books or his journal submissions, monographs, contributions to volumes, etc.? Because that makes quite a bit of difference.
I honestly have little interest in reading his peer-reviewed publications, because I haven't the technical background to really appreciate them. I'm obviously basing my opinions of him and Carrier on the popular materials that they have produced. That may seem lazy, but I have limited time left in life and a lot of things that are higher on my list. :)

Carrier's book was self-published because people gave him money, not because he had any fellowship or similar typical means. He received monetary support...
I think that you may be doing the same disservice to Carrier that you felt I was doing to Ehrman. Given his reputation, he is almost unemployable in academia. Anyway, I don't consider the source of his income or Ehrman's to be the only thing that drives those men. They believe what they say.

Doherty has less credentials than I do when it comes to this subject, but I can't publish a book about the historical Jesus unless I want to make sensationalist claims. Because for the rest, we have over 10,000+ post-docs who need to publish something that can pass actual scrutiny and would kill to write something as easily trashed as Doherty's book.
Actually, I do not agree with you that his book is "easily trashed." Ehrman himself gave him some recognition as a serious researcher, despite is lack of credentials. He is not in the same league as Gandy and Freke. One of the things that so disappointed Carrier was Ehrman's failure to give a good account of the errors in the worst mythicist literature. Most of Doherty's book is building a reasonable case for the possibility that Jesus never existed, yet all of that literature claiming he was real did come into existence. Frankly, that is pretty much the same thing historicists do--build up a speculative case for why all the obvious embellishments in biblical scripture could have arisen around a core of true history.

Ehrman spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the surprising contemporary silence on Jesus. For him, Jesus was little distinguishable from background noise in his day, although Jesus was also supposedly a verbally-skilled, popular leader with a large cult following who was executed in a very public way that got remembered for two millennia afterwards. Ehrman compares him to an everyday common laborer. That makes a lot of sense. :sarcastic

I worked within walking distance of the oldest theological school in this country. And I have met with and talked to some of the faculty, and I know what some previous distinguished faculty from there (and elsewhere) have published about Jesus over the past several decades. If you sign up to be a professor at a university which requires faculty to believe in a particular creed, then you will risk your job if you publish certain things. But that is not the way that the field works, because that is not the case with most universities.
Having been a professor at Columbia, where Carrier comes from, and elsewhere, I feel that I have a pretty good idea of how academia works. I've served on dissertation and academic committees, and I know what the politics is like. I take a somewhat dimmer view of how well academic freedom works than you do. Credentials are important, but the HJ crowd elevates them to almost comical heights of importance. Why? Because most of the argument for HJ rests on the reputations of scholars who support that position. There is very little of substance to the argument when you try to reduce it to its basics. The evidence for HJ is all based on text that was (at best) written a few decades after the alleged crucifixion and preserved for centuries by people with very sharp doctrinal axes to grind. There is nothing else to corroborate it. That is painfully obvious when Ehrman starts to lay it out (after 40 pages of temporizing and bashing mythicists). The "evidence" he presents never quite explains the strength of his conviction in historicity.

Don't judge the field by Ehrman's work (unless you are interested in making money off of the Jesus market).
Ehrman is not the only source of my opinions, nor is Carrier. I do not consider myself academically qualified to judge either man's contributions to their field. But I really don't find it relevant how they make money off of the "Jesus market." Markets will always grow around topics and activities that interest people, and some will be better than others at selling their ideas.

EDIT: if I sound overly bitter, I apologize. It has to do in part with having to move as a grad student who couldn't afford to live where I did because unlike Carrier, I didn't make a career out of something tangentially related to my field or by showing up at various atheist gatherings and getting paid that which has nothing to do with my field (as he did). Also, I was really looking forward to his book, and the bitter disappointment has made me...well, bitter.
You don't sound all that different in your criticism of Carrier than he did in his criticism of Ehrman. Unfortunately, I agree with you that the HJ question is tangential to his field. It is too toxic for mainstream academics to examine it seriously.
 
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Jonathan Hoffman

Active Member
Not all of my beliefs are based on faith. In fact, most of my beliefs are not based on faith.

Alas, rational beliefs are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain of reasoning. . . and faith has proven to be unreliable and worthless as a link in that chain.





(Think of all the deceased Christian coal miners who remembered the words of Jesus and fervently prayed for the mountain to be removed from them before they gasped their last breath. Their faith in Jesus did nothing for them.)
 

Titanic

Well-Known Member
The point that if Jesus was real he was just a rock star? btw sorry you will just have to overlook me. I am just a agnostic. No longer really focus that much on Christ anymore. Is anyone truly sure The Lamb Of God did in fact exist?
 
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