I've seen nothing but bluster
You've offered nothing other than the same. Now I have given you sources explaining the extent of the futility of your "material evidence" nonsense. I could easily offer more, of course, and because I'm bored I will. Let us consider the "material evidence" for myth, which allows us to also address the nonsense you spout regarding the affects of bias in NT studies.
In Latacz's final section he refers to Bryce's
The Kingdom of the Hittites: "In 1998 one of the leading Hittite scholars, Trevor Bryce, attempted to collate some of these facts, if far from all, in order to present a general picture in a separate chapter of his book,
The Kingdom of the Hittites, which he entitled 'The Trojan war: myth or reality'? He concludes that there can no longer be any doubt that the story of the Trojan War has a basis in history. Latacz concurs, and closes his book with 'We can then formulate our conclusion thus: at the point which research has now reached, it may be that we cannot yet say anything definite about the historicity of the Trojan War. However, the possibility that a historical event could underlie the tale of Troy/Wilios...has not diminished as a result of the combined research endeavors of various disciplines during the last twenty years or so. Quite the reverse: it has grown ever stronger.
The abundance of evidence pointing precisely in this direction is already almost overwhelming. And it grows with every month in which new shafts are driven into the mine of mystery by archaeologists, scholars in Anatolian, Hittite, and Greek studies, linguists, and many other representatives of divergent disciplines, all working with strict objectivity and all under the spell of the problem of Troy...The earlier uncertainty dissolves and the solution seems nearer than ever. It would not be surprising if, in the near future, the outcome states: Homer is to be taken seriously."
In a nice tie in with biblical studies, we find in the volume
Epic and History a paper by Jonas Grethlein: "From Imperishable Glory to History: The Iliad and the Trojan War". The paper criticizes Latacz for many reasons, but more importantly makes a much more reasonable claim about epic and history:
"What, then, can we conclude about the
Iliad and history? Greek epic may not be the best instance for elaborating on the use of epics as historical sources, since our comparative evidence is basically the archaeological record. Yet for this very reason Homer is an indispensable source for the student of ancient Greece. While using the
Iliad as a
Quelle is highly problematic, the
Iliad does provide rich insights as an
Überrest.
Homer is not of much use as a guide to the history of events, but he presents important evidence for social history."
"Homer and History: Old Question, New Evidence" provides a better (IMO) description of those like Latacz: "This paper seeks to apply new evidence...to enduring Homeric questions. To some, of course, any discussion of possible elements of historicity in the Homeric epics provides an example of the credulous in pursuit of the tenuous, futilely attempting to circumscribe chronologically the imagination of the poet.
(
my original post)
One of the required texts for a required course for seniors in classical studies or classical languages was
Handbook for Classical Research by Schaps. In "Part IV" ("The Physical Remains"), from the chapter on archaeology:
"It is important for an archaeologist, like every other scholar, to maintain a certain amount of interpretative modesty..it is easy to lose sight of the multiplicity of possible interpretations.
The excavations that Schliemann carried out at Hissarlik convinced him absolutely of the truth of the Homeric epics. Nobody can any longer doubt that there was an important settlement at this site; that the settlement was called Troy (by its inhabitants or by anybody else), and that it was destroyed by an army from Greece, is not written anywhere in the stones- much less that the army (if it existed) was commanded by a man named Agamemnon, or entered the town inside a wooden horse." (emphasis added)
Here and elsewhere archaeological remains were interpreted according to an oral tradition written down so long after its composition that aspects of its grammar are older than that preserved in the Greek preserved in the Linear B texts centuries before classical Greek. Without such texts, we can see how archaeological imagination has run rampant:
"It is hard to overestimate the significance of Gimbutas and her work to the contemporary feminist myth of matriarchal prehistory. Gimbutas loaned her impressive archaeological credentials to a myth...
The most dramatic example of this assimilation is the feminist matriarchalist reading of Paleolithic 'batons'...In spite of its striking resemblance to a phallus, feminist matriarchalists label the Dolni V'estonice baton an 'abstract female with breasts,' 'shaft with breasts,' or 'ivory rod with breasts'...But as archaeologist Timothy Taylor declares, 'it seems disingenuous to avoid the most obvious and straightforward interpretation' that these are 'phallic objects.' Indeed, some of them, at a length of six to eight inches, are hard to mistake for anything else"
Eller, C. (2001).
The myth of matriarchal prehistory. Beacon Press.
"Much of this attempt to identify symbols with definite meanings seems overly assertive. Are zigzags always rain? Are V's always pubic triangles? It challenges credulity when Gimbutas confidently identifies megalithic stone alters in temples in Malta that have a slight tapering lower end as 'pubic triangles'. Reviewers have questioned Gimbutas's penchant for finding definite female gender symbols in every cross, double or triple line, or circle...
[the] effort to establish credible feminist approaches to archaeology has been threatened by Gimbutas's work, with her claims to archaeological credentials...
As Tringham puts it in her review of
The Civilization of the Goddess, 'In page after page [Gimbutas] attempts to convince us of her interpretation of figures as representations of particular manifestations of Goddess (p. 242), or buildings as shrines (p. 326), and of carvings as snakes and vulvas (p. 304)..."
Ruether, R. R. (2005).
Goddesses and the Divine Feminine. University of California Press.
Yet you maintain coins, conquered lands, statues, and so forth (all of which exist for mythical figures, Jesus, and for historical figures even though they provide 0 evidence for them as they are depictions of historical figures as deities or with deities) is somehow "material evidence" of the type that serious archaeologists would laugh at (and have, as shown in by Cynthia Eller's scathing critique of Gimbutas, not to mention those from feminist archaeologist she and Rosemary Radcliffe Ruether quote), or the reactions to archaeologists' desires to turn the
Iliad into history based on their excavations.
Actually they don't. Find me the archaeological site covering just one of these figures, name one. I will wait
Rome. You said Alexander's conquests were "material evidence", but this assumes we know he conquered (among other things). If I go by classical historians, including those for whom we rely on for information on Alexander, we can interpret the fact that Rome existed as evidence for Romulus and Remus. Or I can use your approach to interpret the existence of "Troy" to validate Homer (as some archaeologists have). Indeed, many thousands of extant Christian manuscripts, the plethora of Christian epigraphy, mosaics of Jesus, etc., is exactly the same type of "material evidence" we have for Caesar or Alexander, minus the thousands of manuscripts (and in Alexander's case, minus basically anything like contemporary attestation; certainly, we don't have someone akin to Paul who knew Jesus' brother, a brother attested to independently by Josephus and the synoptics).
Good thing I use a far more complete standard which includes material evidence
No, you abuse material evidence, and your usage doesn't reflect that of mainstream archaeology or the practice of historians, as shown by the blatant discrepancy between your depictions of the "material evidence" for Alexander and those by actual experts whom I quoted.
No historian ignores material evidence yet you do so repeatedly.
I don't ignore it. I just understand what it is and what we can use it for. You consider the same artifacts that exist for deities as evidence for Alexander, whilst ignoring the importance of actual archaeology in historical Jesus studies.
If you standards are far looser than NT scholarship
The standards are higher in NT scholarship (like that surrounding Socrates) because of the vast amount of scholarship and its lengthy history relative to other persons or events from antiquity. The kind of arguments supporting historical readings of Homeric myth, or speculations about the relationship between Antiphons, or willingness to consider quotations from "historians" (who relied heavily on myth) from other supposed historical works centuries before their time of persons who were long dead even by the time of the supposed quoted author as they exist in copies of copies of copies of the original texts in a handful of manuscripts which date to about ~1,000 years after they were written, etc., wouldn't fly in NT scholarship outside of the margins yet is common in Near-Eastern studies, classics, and other fields studying ancient history.
Wrong. There are about 9 contemporary and close to contemporary sources for Caesar.
Never said otherwise.
