Bunyip
pro scapegoat
These ad hominem attacks are just silly mate, get over it. If you can't engage on topic, why not just stop posting?
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The Historical Jesus vs. the historical...?
- Thread starter LegionOnomaMoi
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These ad hominem attacks are just silly mate, get over it. If you can't engage on topic, why not just stop posting?
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
If we were to select another ancient figure for comparison, the relative fragility of the evidence for the histricity of Jesus becomes painfully clear.
Naturally after 2000 years there is little primary evidence for any figure – and the manuscripts we do have are copies and not the originals. However the relative strength of claims of historicity can be established by looking at what we do have.
For Julius Caesar we have extensive passages by the historian Sallust (86-34BC), a full and detailed biography by Seutonius (c75-120AD), another detailed biography by Plutarch (46-127BC), many chapters by Appian (c95-165AD) all of which relate complex timelines and chains of events in which Julius plays a pivotal role.
We also have contemporary sources such as Cicero, Dio Cassius, Livy, Lucan, Valerius Maximus, Vitruvius and Catullus. Julius Caeser is a central figure in the history of the greatest political power on earth and the histories and references to his life form a perfectly consistent record.
We have innumerable coins, statues, monuments, inscriptions and so on contemporary with his life along with several books he authored.
As for Jesus, we have the gospels – all of which of unknown authorship and full of glaring contradictions and inaccuracies. One contemporary (well if you stretch the meaning of contemporary a little) account from Josephus, who speaks of Chrestians and the followers of Chrestos in amorphous brevity – giving no finite details or descriptions. Two of the mentions in Josephus read far more like the work of medieval monks than by any first century Jew and are broadly considered to be later interpolations even by the bulk of Christian scholars.
And yet we see people claiming that the historicity of Jesus – (a man for whom we do not even know the most basic details of his life) is better evidenced than that for any other figure in the ancient world. And further, equally grandiose claims – such as that the historicity of Jesus approaches some unquestionable degree of certainty upon which all respectable scholars agree.
The difference is spectacular - were one to research the historicity of Julius Caesar, or for that matter any of the high ranking Roman nobility of the time, we can find a wealth of evidence. We know where and when Caesar was born, where and when his parents were born and we have full biographies of his life from multiple sources.
For Jesus we know almost nothing from birth to his final mission.
Naturally after 2000 years there is little primary evidence for any figure – and the manuscripts we do have are copies and not the originals. However the relative strength of claims of historicity can be established by looking at what we do have.
For Julius Caesar we have extensive passages by the historian Sallust (86-34BC), a full and detailed biography by Seutonius (c75-120AD), another detailed biography by Plutarch (46-127BC), many chapters by Appian (c95-165AD) all of which relate complex timelines and chains of events in which Julius plays a pivotal role.
We also have contemporary sources such as Cicero, Dio Cassius, Livy, Lucan, Valerius Maximus, Vitruvius and Catullus. Julius Caeser is a central figure in the history of the greatest political power on earth and the histories and references to his life form a perfectly consistent record.
We have innumerable coins, statues, monuments, inscriptions and so on contemporary with his life along with several books he authored.
As for Jesus, we have the gospels – all of which of unknown authorship and full of glaring contradictions and inaccuracies. One contemporary (well if you stretch the meaning of contemporary a little) account from Josephus, who speaks of Chrestians and the followers of Chrestos in amorphous brevity – giving no finite details or descriptions. Two of the mentions in Josephus read far more like the work of medieval monks than by any first century Jew and are broadly considered to be later interpolations even by the bulk of Christian scholars.
And yet we see people claiming that the historicity of Jesus – (a man for whom we do not even know the most basic details of his life) is better evidenced than that for any other figure in the ancient world. And further, equally grandiose claims – such as that the historicity of Jesus approaches some unquestionable degree of certainty upon which all respectable scholars agree.
The difference is spectacular - were one to research the historicity of Julius Caesar, or for that matter any of the high ranking Roman nobility of the time, we can find a wealth of evidence. We know where and when Caesar was born, where and when his parents were born and we have full biographies of his life from multiple sources.
For Jesus we know almost nothing from birth to his final mission.
It's a straw man for the same reason that Ehrman's book on the historical Jesus (perhaps his first popular work) begins with a specious analogy. In seeking to compare Jesus to other examples of millenarianism he cites Cohn’s book on the subject (which traces such movements from late antiquity up to the early modern era). The problem is that such groups/movements were modeled off of the depiction of Jesus in the NT. Standing likewise chooses a supposed “analogous” figure when the analogy was isn’t between two individuals whom other independently believed to be similar, but rather a 20th figure about whom others fit into the messianic template provided by the NT portrayal of Jesus.
The point, though, is that if we look at movements and even sectarian groups throughout history they either have a founder (a central figure who not only begins the movement but around whom it continues to be structured) or do not claim to be based upon such a figure as in the case with Jesus.
However, neither started either a movment or a sect. A group of people does not a religious movement make.
There is a difference between a tradition that is said to have originated due to X figure, and a religious movement which did. The easiest way to see this is by contrasting the many different and distinct traditions across the Roman empire and beyond that were said to originate from X deity or hero (Herakles, Orpheus, etc.) in which the figure is not situated in any spatio-temporal context aside from a general notion of the traditions antiquity (removing the tradition as practiced from the would-be origin, rather than either specifying one or trying to create a direct, shorter link between the origin story and the origin).
Also, this wasn’t a cult (I use that term as historians of antiquity do, not in a derogatory manner). It was not, as almost all religions have ever been, fundamentally a matter of practice, nor was it highly localized as were most of the Greco-Roman cults, nor were its practices freely adapted (in part because of the centrality of belief).
Every person has a “fair number of attributes”, but there is no consensus position on which “fair number of attributes” the historical Jesus had among those who have contributed to historical Jesus scholarship. Once one moves beyond a few bare facts (an approximate birth date, the fact that he was Jewish and gained a following, and was executed) one immediately starts finding divergence. The more specific the portrayal, the more specific it is to the scholar. The historical Jesus of Crossan is fundamentally different from that of Ehrman or of Wright. True, it is not as if every scholar believes in some historical Jesus quite different from every other; rather, there are several sort of “archetypes” out of which there exists one most scholars believe Jesus largely fit into.
[/QUOTE]We do not have the autograph, and what we have is basically a reconstruction of what scholars believe was the original text.[/QUOTE]
That’s true of basically all texts up to Shakespeare and beyond. It’s just that in case of the NT we have an unparalleled wealth of manuscript attestation.
Not really. There is a consensus position on all four canonical gospels.
Um…that’s sort of the nature of oral history and history in general. The “original source” is what happened. If you mean that we don’t know how the oral history and textual traditions align precisely (and that many “layers” and so forth have been posited), this is mostly irrelevant. Biographies of antiquity often wrote about subjects who died centuries earlier and references to works that may have existed are considered enough to put some degree (often too great a degree) of trust in them. More importantly, much of such issues matter when one seeks to determine as best as is possible who Jesus was. It is one thing to argue that Jesus had X set of attributes based on our evidence. It is another to say we can explain the evidence without Jesus.
One of the most surprising things about the wealth of information provided by the Nag Hammadi find was how little it added to what we knew. If the Nag Hammadi library had never been unearthed, we would know almost as much about heretical groups as we do now, because the heresy hunters and the polemical Christian writings didn’t suppress information about non-orthodox/heretical Christian traditions; they ensured their survival.
Actually large numbers of scholars believe that the authors of one or more of the gospels were contemporaries of Jesus, or that (as is explicitly stated) the source behind John was a disciple of Jesus whose teachings/Christology/theology they recorded. However, this again is more of an issue when one wants to go beyond the bare facts. It is not an issue for positing whether Jesus existed.
Given that an extensive study of extended kinship usage in letters from the Hellenistic/Roman era show that what we find in Paul is the one time that always meant literal kinship (i.e., when the relation is between someone named in the letter an another person in the letter, but not to either the writer nor the recipient(s)), that this same brother is attested to in Mark and Josephus, and the construction used is actually called the "genitive of kinship", I’d say there is no reason to suspect that it was some special religious usage and every reason to think that it is the genitive of kinship we find used all over Greco-Roman literature to identify individuals by kin.
Christianity was much less diverse in the 2nd century than in either the 3rd or 4th, and was probably least diverse in the first century (as it took some time to be more than a sectarian Jewish movement).
Or see, for example, Williams, M. A. (1996). Rethinking "Gnosticism": An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category. Princeton University Press.
PRICOPI, V. A. (2013). From Ancient Gnostics to Modern Scholars–Issues in Defining the Concept of “Gnosticism”. Revista romaneasca pentru educatie multidimensionala-Journal for Multidimensional Education, 5(2), 41-56.
Schröter, Jens. Gnosis: Concept, Origin and Context of the "Gnostic movement". Revista Catalana de Teologia 37.1 (2012): 9-27.
Or basically any text on the Gnostics after Williams’ groundbreaking critique (and many before).
Well either you didn’t mean what it seems you did in fact mean, or you have an extremely bizarre understanding of the textual record.
Reading what others say they do or reading their works?
If you value Wiki entries go to the Wiki page on “Gospel” and see the section on “genre”.
The people who ensured works like Against the Galileans, Celsus’ early attack on all Christianity, the vast wealth of information about what scholars later categorized as Gnostics, etc.?
In an oral culture (in which we find Christians in the early 2nd century continuing to rely on the report of eyewitnesses, such as Papias)? Why?
This is more or less the point of the thread (or at least it directly relates to it). There are hundreds and hundreds of figures discussed by historians of antiquity. You pick not just one of the most powerful and important figures in all of the ancient world, but one who was controversial at a time when Roman historians were coming into their own and whose political propaganda survives. This is like saying that someone isn't a swimmer because they can't match Michael Phelps or that anthropogenic global warming isn't a scientific theory because our models have neither the accuracy, precision, explanatory power, or success of quantum mechanics.
Jesus was not an emperor or anything remotely resembling a figure of political power. He wasn't an author nor did he associate with a particularly learned or literate crowd, and he was a member of a marginalized group leading a sectarian movement that was marginalized by that already marginalized group. Most of the names that survive from the ancient world or even just the classical world are simply graffiti carved into brothel walls, names from some funeral inscription, or mentioned in some receipt recovered among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
Here are some names that mythicist Carrier accepted as historical in his doctoral thesis. You tell me how much evidence exists for them and of what kind:
Diocles of Carystus
Praxagoras
Herophilus
Erasistratus
Apollodorus of Alexandria
Apollonius the Citian
Apollonius (also the Citian)
Demetrius of Apamea
Dioscurides Phacus
Crateuas
Dionysius
Metrodorus
Sostratus
Asclepiades of Bithynia
Zeuxis Philalethes
Demosthenes Philalethes
Athenaeus of Attaleia
Aretaeus of Cappodocia
Rufus of Ephesus
Scribonius Largus
Claudius Aganthinus
Archigenes of Apamea
Pedanius Dioscorides
Heliodorus
Statilius Crito
Menodotus
Philumenos of Alexandria
Aelius Promotus
Antyllus
Marinus
Quintus
Lycus
Satyrus
Numisianus
Pelops
Claudius Menecrates
Hermogenes
Sextus Empiricus
Dionysodorus
Perseus
Zenodorus
Dositheus
Diocles
Crates
Aristyllus
Timocharis
Leptines
Hypsicles
Conon
Theodosius of Bithynia
Theon of Smyrna
Philo of Byzantium
Hermogenes
Agesistratus
Apollonius of Rhodes
etc.
I could go on, but as most of these names you'll have trouble finding anything about already, and for most renowned we have practically nothing compared to our evidence for Jesus, yet one of the only mythicists/skeptics with the requisite background has no problem uncritically accepting them as historical.
When you can compare the evidence we have for such figures to Jesus rather than cherry-picking one of the most notable and important politician, military figure, and even (sort of) historian of the ancient world, then you can make an argument. The evidence for Julius Caesar tells us nothing.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Sorry Legion, but that analogy made no sense to me. I am not claiming certainty over the historicity of Julius Caesar. I am just pointing out that there is far more evidence for it.
Why? What would be the point? I am not defending Carrier, nor am I interested in those figures - why would I even care if Carrier thinks that smurfs are historical?
So what? Talk to Carrier, why on earth would you imagine I am obliged to defend anything you say he has claimed?
That is not true. It tells us a great deal about Julius Caesar - far more thaj we know about Jesus. That IS the point.
oldbadger
Skanky Old Mongrel!
'Morning you'all! (Well, it is morning here... 
)
You guys, arguing over method and mindset, remind me of an offshore yacht racing analogy.
The start-gun fires as the fleet approaches the line and they are off and away. But one boat is faster than its immediate neighbour and is creeping up on its quarter, and to windward of it. so the slower boat edges up to windward to block the way. The other, faster, skipper reckons the s/he can still overtake, even by heading further up to windward as well. And these small manoeuvres repeat themselves again and again until these same two boats have left the fleet, and are sailing away, hard on the wind, neither giving in, and both losing ground to the whole race, second by second.
A few minutes before they had been using stop-watches and carefully planned tactics so as not to lose a single foot of position at the start-gun. Now? All thrown away through a duel. Nothing gained......
)You guys, arguing over method and mindset, remind me of an offshore yacht racing analogy.
The start-gun fires as the fleet approaches the line and they are off and away. But one boat is faster than its immediate neighbour and is creeping up on its quarter, and to windward of it. so the slower boat edges up to windward to block the way. The other, faster, skipper reckons the s/he can still overtake, even by heading further up to windward as well. And these small manoeuvres repeat themselves again and again until these same two boats have left the fleet, and are sailing away, hard on the wind, neither giving in, and both losing ground to the whole race, second by second.
A few minutes before they had been using stop-watches and carefully planned tactics so as not to lose a single foot of position at the start-gun. Now? All thrown away through a duel. Nothing gained......
You made a statement about the nature of our evidence for Jesus by comparing this evidence to perhaps the best attested figure from ancient history, ignored all others (and indicated you lack the capacity to even name these let alone demonstrate compare our evidence the historical Jesus to these), and then conclude this means something other than cherry-picking a comparison that distorts the truth fundamentally.
You're pointing out that you can compare the evidence we have for figures for whom we have the most evidence for out of the entirety of the ancient world to what you think our evidence for Jesus is. You haven't pointed out evidence of anything nor made an argument.
What would be the point of demonstrating that your analogy has any relevance whatsoever? Possibly to show that it has any relevance whatsoever. This "we have so much evidence for Julius Caesar compared to Jesus" idiocy isn't just flawed logic and worse reasoning, it's limited by your own very limited knowledge of ancient history, the nature of our evidence, and historiography of antiquity. Thus you are stuck comparing the evidence we have for the most influential and attested individuals from prehistory to the middle ages in order to make your "argument" that we don't have good evidence for the historical Jesus: you can't compare it to the evidence for the vast majority of figures from antiquity because
1) you don't have any idea who these are
&
2) the evidence is pathetic compared to that for the historical Jesus.
I'm asking you to defend your claims. I just used the persons he used. I could have picked many other works and the names within them. The point is, your entire argument here is "look how much evidence we have for Julius Caesar that we don't for Jesus", which means that your entire argument sets a standard that is so high you are essentially arguing we know of nobody from antiquity and nothing of antiquity because you need the amount and quality of evidence to be of a certain level, and that level (once accepted) means we are so critical of our sources most of ancient history is based on nothing and we can know next to nothing about anyone or anything.
Your point is that in order to show we lack evidence for Jesus you are forced to ignore virtually all persons and events from antiquity. You need to turn to the handful of examples for which we (arguably) possess more evidence that exist. For the rest, even if you knew who they were you wouldn't be able to do the same. Nor can you really defend the evidence you cite for Caesar, as you can't justify the trust in our manuscripts you take on authority, you can't justify your trust that the documents were actually written by the alleged authors accept by appeal to authority, and you can't even read these sources (except in translations; of course, here you confuse what the translator writes vs. the original author).
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Sorry, but again you are not making sense. That there is so much more evidence for Caesar IS the argument I was making. It is neither cherry picking, nor a distortion.
I have pointed out thst there is a far stronger case for Caesar, that is the point.
You are confusing me for Carrier, I made no such argument.
I told you that I have no certainty regarding Caesar, you are not making rational objections i'm afraid.
There is more evidence for George Bush, Hilary Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Matt Damon, etc., then there is for Caesar. Ergo, our evidence for Caesar is pathetic, minimal, and next to nothing.
If I can show that we have more evidence for historical figure X than for figure Y, that's all I have done. I've said nothing about the historicity of anybody, I've just proven that I can make bad analogies that indicate nothing.
To repeat: I can pick hundreds of historical figures easily for which our evidence so surpasses Caesar that it makes our evidence for him insignificant, paltry, infinitesimal, and pathetic. That's because this is cherry-picking: I'm choosing examples which don't actually say anything about the evidence for Caesar, the simply show that there are other figures for whom greater evidence exists.
That's what you've done. Cherry-picked some individual whom you are somewhat aware of and given his import and other factors whom we have significant evidence for. All you could conceivably show here is that we have more evidence for some historical figures than others. Great. We have more evidence for Stalin, Mussolini, and Cromwell than for Caesar. Does this tell us anything about our evidence for Caesar? No. Likewise, cherry-picking an individual for whom we have much (relative) evidence like Julius Caesar merely shows that we have much evidence for Julius Caesar. To show this has any relation to our evidence for Jesus or that it matters in the slightest you'd have to show what kind of evidence exists for persons in general, not cherry-pick. You can't, in part because you don't actually really know any of these persons but also because even if you did, you'd fail.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Again I ask you to read 102 again. That was not my argument. You add all manner of inferences and assumptions that I have not made, and then proceed to demolish them - leaving the thrust of my argument unaddressed. You keep telling me what my point is, and yet it is never my point - it is your invention.
I don't see the point.
You didn't just "select another ancient figure for comparison", you cherry-picked one of the few for whom are evidence is greatest. Thus you showed nothing regarding the "relative fragility of the evidence for the historicity of Jesus", just that you can make logically flawed analogies by cherry-picking one of the tiny number of examples for which you can present the kind of evidence that is (almost certainly) superior for that we have for Jesus and ignoring the fact that the vast majority of such comparisons would demonstrate how completely wrong you are. You need to rely on such examples to indicate "the relative fragility of the evidence for the historicity of Jesus" because if you were to rely on the evidence for the vast majority of historical figures from antiquity, the flaws, failures, and obvious shortcomings of your argument would become "painfully clear".
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Legion
You acknowledge in your last post that there is more evidence for many figures in the ancient world than there is for Jesus. My friend, that is the position that i have taken in all of these threads since i came to this forum.
You have confused my position for one that you have invented for me. For the vast majority of people in the ancient world we have absolutely nothing, never suggested otherwise.
You have attributed to me a very distorted version of what you appear to imagine Carrier was arguing. All of your commentary upon my inadequacies - and yet you have conceded my position explicitly.
You acknowledge in your last post that there is more evidence for many figures in the ancient world than there is for Jesus. My friend, that is the position that i have taken in all of these threads since i came to this forum.
You have confused my position for one that you have invented for me. For the vast majority of people in the ancient world we have absolutely nothing, never suggested otherwise.
You have attributed to me a very distorted version of what you appear to imagine Carrier was arguing. All of your commentary upon my inadequacies - and yet you have conceded my position explicitly.
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I didn't. Where did I say "many"?
Your position has always been that there are different levels of evidence for various figures from ancient history? Fantastic. There is much more evidence for Julius Caesar than Alexander the Great. Does this say anything that is in any way relevant or worthwhile? No. Likewise, your cherry-picked analogy is equally bereft of utility and lacking anything remotely resembling import.
=
Wrong. I've always recognized that your artificial, nonsensical analogy is as pointless as it is indicative of your inability to address the topic. Basic logic dictates that had your little comparison mattered at all, we could then compare the evidence for Julius Caesar to those like Plato, Alexander the Great, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Aristotle, etc., and find that for most of the names commonly recognized all you've shown is that you can find those for whom we have greater evidence than others you accept as historical.
This you asserted. And your are so pathetically wrong it would be funny had you not continually harped on this point while denying you made it.
NOTHING in ANYTHING you've said demonstrates "the relative fragility" of our evidence for the historical Jesus because all you can do is parrot the evidence for the most well-known figures of antiquity as you understand them based on wikipedia and quote-mined google books.
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Desert Snake
Veteran Member
"Evidence" according to you? The obvious subjectivity here is ridiculous.
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