To The Jesus Myth Theorist

[outhouse]

I think that's my position as well. I'm looking into some of the Gnostic text. I'm interested in reading the Gospel of Thomas. Something I've noticed about the four gospels is that Mark, even though it contains many esoteric overtones, seems to be more toned down in its fanciful claims about Yeshua than Matthew, Luke and John. The Gospel of Thomas seems to be more of the sayings of Yeshua but lacks all the drama told in the other gospels. Let me know you you all think. To me it seems that the earlier writings about Yeshua that portray him as a regular guy (rabbi/teacher) seem to be closer to the "real" Yeshua.

that and Q

 

[michaelsherlock]

You started your post with the following:



Renan wrote what he believed was a critical historical account of the historical Jesus. That's what modern historians do as well, only they're better. It in no way supports or promotes the concept of the "christ myth" unless by "christ myth" you mean "Jesus was not the son of god." In which case, almost every single work on the historical Jesus would support this, as even believing christian scholars seperate the historical Jesus from the christ of faith.

Then why not look at modern historical-critical accounts? As these deal with exactly that issue using modern historical methods.


Not in the slightest. That's the point of the whole concept of the "historical Jesus." It's the recognition that the historical person must be differentiated from the Jesus Christ of the gospels.

Cline admits that we have no evidence for an historical Jesus outside various textual sources, sources that when investigated, turn out to be predominantly spurious.

We don't have archaeological evidence for just about anyone from ancient history. As for "predominantly spurious" so far all you've listed to support this conclusion is a handful of largely outdated and/or irrelevant works.



1) You haven't provided a wide range. You've selected a tiny handful.
2) Most aren't scholars.
3) Most are outdated
4) Of the two who are modern, one knows full well we have enough evidence to say that there was a historical Jesus.





There is no logically sound argument that a historical Jesus didn't exist. That's why you have to resort to random individuals and works written a century ago. There's plenty of good, logical arguments to support the fact that we can't know a great deal about this person, and virtually all historical Jesus scholarship approaches the sources from a critical standpoint.



I have no "belief system." I'm very much interested in accuracy and truth, and I find distortions, particularly blatant ones, more than a little distasteful.



I can't know. As with all of history and most of science it's a matter of the most likely explanation from the evidence. There's no plausible argument given the evidence we have which supports the notion that Jesus existed. It's possible he didn't, and in my mind certainly more possible than that he rose from the dead, but it's also "possible" that the gospels were actually written by Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John. It's just extremely unlikely.



How can you claime to analyze the issue dispassionately by rejecting all modern historical Jesus scholarship as biased so that you can support picking whatever sources you can find which you think support your conclusion, whether or not they do or whether or not you've actually read them? There are volumes and volumes of work on this subject by specialists, with a wide range of views, from "we can know very little" to "the gospels are pretty accurate histories from which we can know a lot about the historical Jesus." If you want to "analyze the issue" you would need to address their arguments, not dig around for hundred year old material written by random individuals.




Then you are going about it terribly. Believing christian scholars do a better job of this.



Everyone does. But if you mean pre-established religious beliefs, or that these beliefs make their works too biased, then evidence for that would be nice, considering your "dispassionate" approach.


I didn't address Mangasarian because there's no point in addressing a non-specialist who wrote a century ago when I can read the primary sources myself as well as the past 50+ years of critical historical Jesus scholarship. Reimarus, Strauss, Holtzmann, Renan, Wrede, & Schweitzer are one thing. They are important because of the foundations they set.
But I'm not going to read a bunch of random accounts from the 19th or early 20th century so that I can reinvent the wheel using bad tools.


I'm not making any claims as to their beliefs. I know many are believing christians, and many are not. However, the people who are in the best position to know about the historical Jesus are those who can read the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic sources (at least) as well as the secondary scholarship (most of which is not written in English, but in German, French, and Italian). You are the one discounting the very people most informed about this issue with a claim that they are too biased. When asked to substantiate this claim, you turn around and ask me to "prove" they aren't?



I'm a researcher in cognitive science. My main research areas of interests are linguistics, dynamical systems, and neuroscience.[/quote]

you seem to know quite abit more than I in this area, so the smart thing for me to do would be to ask for your help. Whose works do you suggest, to undermine the historicity of jesus? Do you know of any who have cast serious doubt on the existence of Jesus as a purely historical character, because as far as I have read, the issue is debatable, so there must be some scholars who you would see as presenting evidence for the negative in this issue. Who are they?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Whose works do you suggest, to undermine the historicity of jesus? Do you know of any who have cast serious doubt on the existence of Jesus as a purely historical character, because as far as I have read, the issue is debatable, so there must be some scholars who you would see as presenting evidence for the negative in this issue. Who are they?

The evidence for a historical Jesus is overwhelming. My other major was classical languages (ancient Greek and Latin). I was interested in the historical Jesus before that, partly just because I'm interested in history and partly because it was during the time I had already seriously questioned the validity of God or religion and specifically the one I was raised in. However, at that time I was unable to read anything other than Latin, so it wasn't until I began undergraduate work and studied ancient Greek, Latin, German, & French (and to a lesser extend several other languages) that I could examine the matter in great depth. This was also the time, however, that I had to study classical scholarship, which involved learning the evidence we have for Greek and Roman individuals and the culture they lived in. The fact that a nobody from a supressed culture who operated outside of major cities somehow manages to have more written about him than virtually anybody in the ancient world is because he was a historical individual. I've read Tacitus, Caesar, Seutonius, Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Diogenes Laertius, Xenophon, and other Greek and Roman historians. The divide between history/religion/myth/etc was simply not clear cut:

As Suzanne Said states in her paper "Myth and Historiography": "Historiography was born out of myth..." She goes into some detail on the use of myth and story-telling even in Polybius, let alone Diadorus, Strabo, Dionysius, etc.

The gospels are a form of ancient history. They are clearly biased in a number of ways, and inferior to many other ancient historical works. How accurate they are and how accurate the tradition they relied upon was is debated. On the one side are people like Burton Mack, who skepticism rivals that of Bultmann as far as our ability to know who the historical Jesus was, to those like Bauckham, who argue that the gospels rest on a oral tradition which was carefully preserved. The truth is somewhere in the middle. But there are virtually no historians whose work concerns in some way 1st century palestine who argue that we don't have enough evidence to know basic facts about Jesus (he was a historical person, born ~4BCE in 1st century palestine, had a following, and was executed via crucifixion). Those few who do (I know of only Price, as Richard Carrier hasn't published anything yet) have not published any academic works, because it's a lot easier to mislead non-specialists than to have such an argument be taken seriously by actual specialists.

That said, if you want a recent study of the oral tradition behind the gospels which finds that it was highly flexible, read Werner Kelber's The Oral and Written Gospel. Burton Mack is a good place to start for skeptical views. Robert Funk is as well (along with most of the big names among the Jesus Seminar group).

For non-christan scholars (which is difficult, as I don't know the religion of most of the scholars I read; I was initially quite suprised to read some accounts of Jesus which seemed so unchristian only to find out they were written by a priest or something similar), some big names are Vermes, Neusner, Fredriksen, & Ehrman (the first three are Jewish).

For historians who have no specific training in biblical studies or religious studies, off of the top of my head there's Donald Akenson who wrote a book on the subject and Loveday Alexander whose degrees are in classics but who has done a great deal of work in biblical studies. However, neither will help you out here. If memory serves, Akenson is far less of a skeptic than a good many biblical scholars, and Alexander isn't exactly a Mack or Funk.

 

[michaelsherlock]

The evidence for a historical Jesus is overwhelming. My other major was classical languages (ancient Greek and Latin). I was interested in the historical Jesus before that, partly just because I'm interested in history and partly because it was during the time I had already seriously questioned the validity of God or religion and specifically the one I was raised in. However, at that time I was unable to read anything other than Latin, so it wasn't until I began undergraduate work and studied ancient Greek, Latin, German, & French (and to a lesser extend several other languages) that I could examine the matter in great depth. This was also the time, however, that I had to study classical scholarship, which involved learning the evidence we have for Greek and Roman individuals and the culture they lived in. The fact that a nobody from a supressed culture who operated outside of major cities somehow manages to have more written about him than virtually anybody in the ancient world is because he was a historical individual. I've read Tacitus, Caesar, Seutonius, Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, Diogenes Laertius, Xenophon, and other Greek and Roman historians. The divide between history/religion/myth/etc was simply not clear cut:

The gospels are a form of ancient history. They are clearly biased in a number of ways, and inferior to many other ancient historical works. How accurate they are and how accurate the tradition they relied upon was is debated. On the one side are people like Burton Mack, who skepticism rivals that of Bultmann as far as our ability to know who the historical Jesus was, to those like Bauckham, who argue that the gospels rest on a oral tradition which was carefully preserved. The truth is somewhere in the middle. But there are virtually no historians whose work concerns in some way 1st century palestine who argue that we don't have enough evidence to know basic facts about Jesus (he was a historical person, born ~4BCE in 1st century palestine, had a following, and was executed via crucifixion). Those few who do (I know of only Price, as Richard Carrier hasn't published anything yet) have not published any academic works, because it's a lot easier to mislead non-specialists than to have such an argument be taken seriously by actual specialists.

That said, if you want a recent study of the oral tradition behind the gospels which finds that it was highly flexible, read Werner Kelber's The Oral and Written Gospel. Burton Mack is a good place to start for skeptical views. Robert Funk is as well (along with most of the big names among the Jesus Seminar group).

For non-christan scholars (which is difficult, as I don't know the religion of most of the scholars I read; I was initially quite suprised to read some accounts of Jesus which seemed so unchristian only to find out they were written by a priest or something similar), some big names are Vermes, Neusner, Fredriksen, & Ehrman (the first three are Jewish).

For historians who have no specific training in biblical studies or religious studies, off of the top of my head there's Donald Akenson who wrote a book on the subject and Loveday Alexander whose degrees are in classics but who has done a great deal of work in biblical studies. However, neither will help you out here. If memory serves, Akenson is far less of a skeptic than a good many biblical scholars, and Alexander isn't exactly a Mack or Funk.

I have not read any overwhelming evidence for an historical Jesus, so let us play this another way. Please, if you would be so kind, introduce me to the overwhelming evidence for an historical Jesus. I have read Tacitus, Seutonius, Pliny elder and younger, Josephus, and other ancient scholars as well and throughout the 3 volume series I have authored, I quote and refer to many of them.

I have read Vermes and Ehrman's works, but I have not read any of Donald Akenson's works but for 'Surpassing Wonder' and I am unfamiliar with Loveday Alexander, Fredrikson and Neusner so I will look into these guys.

Where do you stand on Remsburg and Wheless?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I have not read any overwhelming evidence for an historical Jesus

What are your starting assumptions? What would you expect to find if Jesus did exist, and why? What is your basis for comparison with respect to our evidence for Jesus and other figures from ancient history?

Here, for example, is a paper I wrote as an undergrad on the historical Socrates, which not only compares reconstructing the historical Socrates and the historical Jesus, but covers the history of both (albeit briefly, as the paper itself without footnotes or the reference section is only 35+ pages): The Quest for the Historical Socrates

If we had no gospels and only the letters of Paul, the one unquestioned reference to Jesus in Josephus (which simply uses Jesus to identify his brother James), and Tacitus, we'd have more evidence for a historical Jesus than we do for Pythagoras. We'd know next to nothing about him, of course, but that's true of most of the people we know of from ancient history. The mere fact that a contemporary of Jesus knew Jesus' brother, who is also identified as such by Josephus (a non-christian historian who was around when Jesus' brother was executed), would provide a contemporary witness to a family member of Jesus and backed up by a very early secondary source. That's quite a lot, given that for many names which survive in the ancient record we can't be certain which one is which (how many Antiphon's were there), or all the information we have comes from at least a century after the person lived, or it's just a name in a letter which we can't know was accurately perserved because the manuscript or two we have dates from the middle ages. And that's without factoring in other non-gospel sources like Papias, who states that he didn't care what his fellow christians had to say about commandments unless they could report what those who knew Jesus (he ends his list with "any of the lord's disciples" but specifically mentions Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, Matthew, James, John, the elder John, & Aristion) said about Jesus' teachings. Other non-christian sources are covered in brief (with plenty of references) in Theißen and Merz' Der historische Jesus in section 3 "Die nicht-christlichen Quellen über Jesus" from Josephus to Thallus.

However, we DO have the gospels. They are biased, they are religiously motivated, they contain so much doesn't belong in modern history, but they aren't "modern history." They are ancient histories, and such works existed along a continuum from the more careful and skeptical to the much less so. Ancient Greek and Roman historians from Herodotus onwards used sources like the Iliad in their work, including Polybius, Diodorus Siculous, Livy, etc. Caesar reported unicorns in Germania. Philostratus wrote a biography of the magician Apollonius. Dionysius rejects the myth that Romulus and Remus' mother was impregnated by a god, because that's just obviously unbelievable, so he concludes that she was raped. The fact that the entire basis for her existence was pure ancient legend didn't seem to occur to him.

Then there's the fact that even blatantly and deliberately non-historical genres discuss historical individuals. Aristophanes' comic plays on Socrates are a prime example. Paul is another: he was writing letters. We know a great deal about letters, how they were written, what formulae they followed, etc., in and around Paul's day. Written speeches by professional orators are another.


In short, there's no good reason to reject the gospels as completely unreliable sources for Jesus. They are early, they are a type of ancient history, they represent independent traditions (most likely, Mark, Q, and John, and perhaps Matthew and Luke had independent sources apart from Mark and Q). The brother of Jesus mentioned by Paul and Josephus is independently attested to in Mark and Q. Not only that, but these documents were preserved like no others in history. Apart from the possible recent 1st century finding of a scrap of Mark, our earliest papyrus is from John, the last gospel, and was written not long after the original. When I read editions of Euripides, Plato, Xenophon, etc., the textual critical apparati would mention a few manuscripts, because that's all we had (and I didn't realize until later that most of these were written over a thousand years after the original). Yet the gospels and Paul's letters were copied and distributed widely and early, while people like Josephus (and even older individuals) were still around. So why, if Jesus never existed, but there is so much evidence which dates from periods while his alleged followers and even family were still alive, did no one question his existence? We're talking about a highly communal (non-individualistic) society where family and kinship are everything and such networks are quite wide. The idea that just Mark alone, which situates Jesus in a recent time and in particular places, could be widely distributed by followers without anybody realizing that Jesus didn't exist, that his disciples either didn't exist or were lying about his existence (and the same with his family), is baseless.

That an individual could gain followers and be thought to perform miracles by those around him is absolutely believable. It happens today (with "faith healings" and other "miracles" or magic).

the 3 volume series I have authored, I quote and refer to many of them.

What 3 volume series? And can you read greek or latin? That becomes quite important, for everything from understanding genre to understanding why a particular phrase or line (such as those referencing Jesus' brother) ought to be read in a certain light. What secondary scholarship have you read on greco-roman historiography? Or textual criticism? If you've read Josephus and Vermes, what do you think of Vermes' analysis of the so-called Testimonium Flavianum?

Where do you stand on Remsburg and Wheless?

Again, why would I read non-academic works which are quite outdated? They have less access to information than I have, both concerning primary sources and secondary.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

This “historical Christ” to which I refer, is the one related in the Gospels, the one who was born of a virgin, ...

Pummel that straw man!

Who is the strawman?

To conflate the question of divinity with the issue of historicity is either pathetically disingenuous or preposterously naive. So, for the record: yes, there exists no historical proof of virgin birth. Congratulations on your polemical victory ...

 

[michaelsherlock]

I have no starting assumptions, just questions. Are there any contemporaneous sources for the historical Jesus? If not, why not? The Gospels claim that he was well known by not only the multitudes, but by members of the royal and imperial courts in both Judah and Rome. Who should have mentioned him, but did not? For my mind Philo was one. I agree that trying to find the historical Socrates is very similar as we only have the testimony of the likes of Aristophanes and Plato, and Plato's references to Socrates seem to vary between his early, middle and late works.
I do not believe in a historical Socrates either, I consider him a possible historical figure as I do Jesus. When I get a chance I will read your article, it looks interesting. Have you published any other material?

If we had no gospels and only the letters of Paul,

the one unquestioned reference to Jesus in Josephus (which simply uses Jesus to identify his brother James),

Personally, I am a little skeptical of this reference to Jesus, the brother of James (who was called Christ), as this work had passed through many Christian hands over the centuries and it may have been altered or added to, to support the Christian claim to the historicity of their Heracles. It is a possibility. Further, a reference to a Jesus the brother of James to me, is like a reference to a Tom the brother of Dick and cousin of Harry, the name Joshua, Yeshua or the derogatory Yeshu, were very common names and appear in Josephus' Antiquities describing 20 different people by that name. It does not prove an historical Jesus.
As far as the Tacitus and Suetonius references, I find these dubious as well, not only due to the silence of the early fathers, in referring to them but Suetonius’ reference implies that Jesus was in Rome. There are other problems with these references which I go through in the first volume in my work, but at the end of the day, these 2nd century references provide little more than evidence for the religion of Christianity existing in the 2nd century which is not evidence of an historical Jesus, just as references to Buddhism is not proof that Gautama Buddha existed either, or any other god or demi-god for that matter.

I have looked into Lucian and all of the so-called witnesses, both Christian and non-Christian and none provide solid historical evidence for an historical Jesus. This is of course not to say that he did not exist, but the evidence is insufficient and certainly not overwhelming for the Jesus of the Gospels.

Further, I thought the earliest Papyrus we have is a Pauline Epistle, not a scrap of John?!

Pertaining to the letters of Paul, what do they really tell us about the life of Jesus? And in what way does Paul’s theology differ from Jesus’? The answers to these two questions in order are, ‘little to nothing’ and ‘a lot’! So the letters of Paul are virtually useless from an historical point of view, especially considering the fact that even the author, if he in fact be this Paul, met Jesus via hallucination/Vision, which in my mind is not the most reliable testimony to the historicity of a real person.

You also assert: The idea that just Mark alone, which situates Jesus in a recent time and in particular places, could be widely distributed by followers without anybody realizing that Jesus didn't exist, that his disciples either didn't exist or were lying about his existence (and the same with his family), is baseless.

Really? Essentially, your argument seems to be saying that because certain religious manuscripts were in circulation at around the alleged time of Jesus, that he must have existed! This argument seems rooted in faith rather than reason, for many gods have “existed” and even certain miracles witnessed and reported around the times of their alleged occurrence.
Take for example, both Tacitus and Suetonius’ reports of Emperor Vespasian’s miracles.
Now, Vespasian died sometime around 79CE and Tacitus wrote his Annals within at least 30 years from Vespasian’s death. Does this mean that because Tacitus wrote his testimony shortly after Vespasian’s death, at a time when friends and former colleagues of Vespasian would have still been alive, that it must have been true? Of course not! Lies can pertain to both present and past events and characters. I think you are a little too trusting to be a serious objective scholar/researcher. Now, Jesus may have been real, Vespasian may have performed miracles similar to the Gospel’s Christ and reptilians could be secretly controlling human affairs from behind the scenes, but without proof, and with little evidence, as is the case with both the earthly Jesus and the Incredible Christ, we profit nothing from belief, one way or the other.

 

[michaelsherlock]

You go on to say: That an individual could gain followers and be thought to perform miracles by those around him is absolutely believable. It happens today (with "faith healings" and other "miracles" or magic).

I think the ancient alien theory is believable, but that doesn’t mean it is true! There is some compelling evidence for the ancient alien theory, yet I do not believe such a story, nor do I believe that an earthly “magician” called Yeshua tricked those around him even though the Talmud, Toledoth Yeshu and the Tosefta, would like me to believe it. Just because something is believable does not mean that it happened, or is happening!

Finally, you say: What 3 volume series? And can you read greek or latin? That becomes quite important, for everything from understanding genre to understanding why a particular phrase or line (such as those referencing Jesus' brother) ought to be read in a certain light. What secondary scholarship have you read on greco-roman historiography? Or textual criticism? If you've read Josephus and Vermes, what do you think of Vermes' analysis of the so-called Testimonium Flavianum?

The first volume is due to be released in Autumn/Fall (northern hemisphere) this year and the following two next year. The series is called; ‘I Am Christ,’ and no, I am not claiming to be Christ!

I do not read Greek or Latin, yet modern technology coupled with secondary scholarship, as you put it, allows even us tri-lingual authors to compose works that may or may not be of use to humanity. If only those who could read Greek or Latin were allowed to comment on works that were originally composed in those languages, then this would limit the number of valuable works which have been and will be, composed to shed new perspectives on old issues. I realize that reading something in its original language is an advantage, as not all meaning transcends language and cultural boundaries, as I live in Japan and speak Japanese, English and Hindi, yet many scholars have done that aspect of the work, as is their desire, so that those of us who have other aspects, or focusses can do our jobs! Team effort if you like!

Greco-roman Scholars I have actually read include:

Tacitus-Annals
Suetonius-12 Caesars
Pliny the Elder-(excerpts from his Natural History)
Plutarch-Lives and the Life of Alexander
Iamblichus -


Admittedly I have read more on more ancient scholars, like Herodotus, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, Thucydides, Eratosthenes, and others I cannot bring to mind right now. Although, I did a double major at Uni, Pol-Sci and Law, I also studied a minor in Sociology, which opened up a passion for history for me. Since those days long ago, I have not stopped reading every chance I get, writing notebooks after notebooks on ancient history, philosophy, religion, theology, mythology, psychology, sociology, social psychology and even Hypnosis and NLP, which are my two recent mistresses, so to speak. I am also studying Hebrew at the moment and hopefully by next year I will be able to read some of the works I have ambitiously collected. Yet with two young children, work, my books, My private study time is limited to the nights and early mornings.

Oh, yeah, you also said: Again, why would I read non-academic works which are quite outdated?

Allow me to share one of the most valuable lessons I have learnt in my short life. Inspiration can be found almost anywhere you choose to look. It is a little like verse 77 of the Gospel of Thomas; you know, split a piece of wood and you will find me there, lift up a stone and so on… So please do not limit your studies to those with initials and who are attached to “official” institutions, for this is merely the act of someone seeking to ask “daddy!” Be your own researcher, come to your own conclusions, don’t allow modern or even ancient institutions of learning to mold your mind according to what this “expert” or “specialist” says, be your own person! Trust me on this, I know you place a lot of faith in those you deem to be “specialists” but brilliance can be found in the gutters and on the mountain tops! The whole idea of a book, whether it be written by an Oxford scholar or a person who has taken it upon themselves to learn everything they can about a subject matter, is that the way that individual sees the issue can cause a domino effect, inspiring the growth and development of a seed which they have planted in your mind. Do not shut your doors! Keep your mind open! Academia, it seems, is a religion, just like Christianity and the others, be your own Christ!

Thucydides is outdated, yet is there any harm in heading his wise words in the Peloponnesian War; “…it is a habit of mankind to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy”.


Take care and I look forward to our future dialogues.

 

[michaelsherlock]

To conflate the question of divinity with the issue of historicity is either pathetically disingenuous or preposterously naive. So, for the record: yes, there exists no historical proof of virgin birth. Congratulations on your polemical victory ...

As I have said, quite a few times now, I understand that the issue of historical person, versus magic son of one of the Jewish tribal gods (YHWH) are two seperate issues, yet apologists tend to think that one relates somehow to the other and so I am addressing the initial post in such a manner as is appropriate for the mind of the OP.

 

[michaelsherlock]

The logic you are using though can also be applied to Alexander the Great, or Augustus. Both has supernatural ideas attached to them. Not to mention the many other great figures in history who have had the same.

In context, there is no problem with supernatural stories being attached to Jesus. It is what we would expect.

I agree! Now they may all be true, some may be true, one may be true, all they all may be false, of course this does not disprove the historical character, just as the reported miracles of Vespasian, recorded by Tacitus and Suetonius, do not disprove he was not real, yet, I am addressing the OP, from her appologetic standpoint, which often confuses the two issues, and seems to think that if you can prove Jesus was an historical person, that means that he was a zombie god-man too!

 

[michaelsherlock]

What are your starting assumptions? What would you expect to find if Jesus did exist, and why? What is your basis for comparison with respect to our evidence for Jesus and other figures from ancient history?

Here, for example, is a paper I wrote as an undergrad on the historical Socrates, which not only compares reconstructing the historical Socrates and the historical Jesus, but covers the history of both (albeit briefly, as the paper itself without footnotes or the reference section is only 35+ pages): The Quest for the Historical Socrates

If we had no gospels and only the letters of Paul, the one unquestioned reference to Jesus in Josephus (which simply uses Jesus to identify his brother James), and Tacitus, we'd have more evidence for a historical Jesus than we do for Pythagoras. We'd know next to nothing about him, of course, but that's true of most of the people we know of from ancient history. The mere fact that a contemporary of Jesus knew Jesus' brother, who is also identified as such by Josephus (a non-christian historian who was around when Jesus' brother was executed), would provide a contemporary witness to a family member of Jesus and backed up by a very early secondary source. That's quite a lot, given that for many names which survive in the ancient record we can't be certain which one is which (how many Antiphon's were there), or all the information we have comes from at least a century after the person lived, or it's just a name in a letter which we can't know was accurately perserved because the manuscript or two we have dates from the middle ages. And that's without factoring in other non-gospel sources like Papias, who states that he didn't care what his fellow christians had to say about commandments unless they could report what those who knew Jesus (he ends his list with "any of the lord's disciples" but specifically mentions Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, Matthew, James, John, the elder John, & Aristion) said about Jesus' teachings. Other non-christian sources are covered in brief (with plenty of references) in Theißen and Merz' Der historische Jesus in section 3 "Die nicht-christlichen Quellen über Jesus" from Josephus to Thallus.

However, we DO have the gospels. They are biased, they are religiously motivated, they contain so much doesn't belong in modern history, but they aren't "modern history." They are ancient histories, and such works existed along a continuum from the more careful and skeptical to the much less so. Ancient Greek and Roman historians from Herodotus onwards used sources like the Iliad in their work, including Polybius, Diodorus Siculous, Livy, etc. Caesar reported unicorns in Germania. Philostratus wrote a biography of the magician Apollonius. Dionysius rejects the myth that Romulus and Remus' mother was impregnated by a god, because that's just obviously unbelievable, so he concludes that she was raped. The fact that the entire basis for her existence was pure ancient legend didn't seem to occur to him.

Then there's the fact that even blatantly and deliberately non-historical genres discuss historical individuals. Aristophanes' comic plays on Socrates are a prime example. Paul is another: he was writing letters. We know a great deal about letters, how they were written, what formulae they followed, etc., in and around Paul's day. Written speeches by professional orators are another.


In short, there's no good reason to reject the gospels as completely unreliable sources for Jesus. They are early, they are a type of ancient history, they represent independent traditions (most likely, Mark, Q, and John, and perhaps Matthew and Luke had independent sources apart from Mark and Q). The brother of Jesus mentioned by Paul and Josephus is independently attested to in Mark and Q. Not only that, but these documents were preserved like no others in history. Apart from the possible recent 1st century finding of a scrap of Mark, our earliest papyrus is from John, the last gospel, and was written not long after the original. When I read editions of Euripides, Plato, Xenophon, etc., the textual critical apparati would mention a few manuscripts, because that's all we had (and I didn't realize until later that most of these were written over a thousand years after the original). Yet the gospels and Paul's letters were copied and distributed widely and early, while people like Josephus (and even older individuals) were still around. So why, if Jesus never existed, but there is so much evidence which dates from periods while his alleged followers and even family were still alive, did no one question his existence? We're talking about a highly communal (non-individualistic) society where family and kinship are everything and such networks are quite wide. The idea that just Mark alone, which situates Jesus in a recent time and in particular places, could be widely distributed by followers without anybody realizing that Jesus didn't exist, that his disciples either didn't exist or were lying about his existence (and the same with his family), is baseless.

That an individual could gain followers and be thought to perform miracles by those around him is absolutely believable. It happens today (with "faith healings" and other "miracles" or magic).


What 3 volume series? And can you read greek or latin? That becomes quite important, for everything from understanding genre to understanding why a particular phrase or line (such as those referencing Jesus' brother) ought to be read in a certain light. What secondary scholarship have you read on greco-roman historiography? Or textual criticism? If you've read Josephus and Vermes, what do you think of Vermes' analysis of the so-called Testimonium Flavianum?


Again, why would I read non-academic works which are quite outdated? They have less access to information than I have, both concerning primary sources and secondary.

Have you ever heard of a "scholar" by the name of Neil Godfrey?

Read this;
Mythicism vs. the Socratic Historians « Exploring Our Matrix

Thought you might find it interesting.

 

[Dirty Penguin]

that and Q

Yeah but I'm waiting for such a document to be revealed. Until then I can't really comment too much on a hypothetical document. The Gospel of Thomas and maybe the Didache appear to present Yeshua and his teachings as one might come to expect from a rabbi/teacher. There seems to be no fluff in them like we see in the gospels. They don't paint the whole story of Yeshua but it does seem to paint a strikingly different portrait of him vs. what we find in the gospels.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Have you ever heard of a "scholar" by the name of Neil Godfrey?

Read this;
Mythicism vs. the Socratic Historians « Exploring Our Matrix

Thought you might find it interesting.

It is interesting, as it's exactly my point. The author of the post you link to is Dr. J. McGrath, not Godfrey (who is quoted as an example of mythicist bias, and is not a scholar). McGrath's point is that if mythicists were as skeptical of sources for other individual's of the ancient world, then they would pretty much reject everything. From your link:

"It seems to me that here we get at the heart of the matter. If mythicists were interested in historical method for its own sake, they would be addressing the case of Socrates differently. If they were determined to deny the historicity of Socrates, we’d be hearing about how late the copies are of texts that mention him, and the possibility of interpolation. We’d be hearing emphasized that he is mentioned as a character in a play and in dialogues that are clearly intended to illustrate philosophical points rather than provide historical information. We’d have arguments that Xenophon turns Socrates into a real figure the way the Gospel authors are alleged by mythicists to have turned Paul’s doctrines into narrative.
A commenter on the post at Vridar asks why mythicism is not respected. Above all else, this is the reason. Mythicism isn’t about treating historical sources in the same way across the board. It is entirely the purview of people with a vendetta against Christianity, although even in such circles there are plenty who do not find it persuasive.
And it must be emphasized that it is taken no more seriously among mainstream historians than in Biblical studies. Indeed, less so. The practitioners of mythicism are not historians by profession, but people with degrees in fields like Biblical studies and theology, when they have higher degrees at all related to this subject. The very sorts of degrees the holders of which Neil Godfrey regularly disparages."

 

[outhouse]

Yeah but I'm waiting for such a document to be revealed. Until then I can't really comment too much on a hypothetical document. The Gospel of Thomas and maybe the Didache appear to present Yeshua and his teachings as one might come to expect from a rabbi/teacher. There seems to be no fluff in them like we see in the gospels. They don't paint the whole story of Yeshua but it does seem to paint a strikingly different portrait of him vs. what we find in the gospels.

I wouldnt hold your breath

until then assumptions is all we can go by.


Theres no reason to think it couldnt have existed in oral tradition.


I agree that it could give us the best picture of HJ that we have.


Funny Gmark rambles on, putting these parables one next to each other as if HJ was just rattling them off. Its more then likely Gmarks author was also using a simular source when contructing his work. We know these were more then likey carefully spoken on a individual basis then chatted off

 

[michaelsherlock]

It is interesting, as it's exactly my point. The author of the post you link to is Dr. J. McGrath, not Godfrey (who is quoted as an example of mythicist bias, and is not a scholar). McGrath's point is that if mythicists were as skeptical of sources for other individual's of the ancient world, then they would pretty much reject everything. From your link:

"It seems to me that here we get at the heart of the matter. If mythicists were interested in historical method for its own sake, they would be addressing the case of Socrates differently. If they were determined to deny the historicity of Socrates, we’d be hearing about how late the copies are of texts that mention him, and the possibility of interpolation. We’d be hearing emphasized that he is mentioned as a character in a play and in dialogues that are clearly intended to illustrate philosophical points rather than provide historical information. We’d have arguments that Xenophon turns Socrates into a real figure the way the Gospel authors are alleged by mythicists to have turned Paul’s doctrines into narrative.
A commenter on the post at Vridar asks why mythicism is not respected. Above all else, this is the reason. Mythicism isn’t about treating historical sources in the same way across the board. It is entirely the purview of people with a vendetta against Christianity, although even in such circles there are plenty who do not find it persuasive.
And it must be emphasized that it is taken no more seriously among mainstream historians than in Biblical studies. Indeed, less so. The practitioners of mythicism are not historians by profession, but people with degrees in fields like Biblical studies and theology, when they have higher degrees at all related to this subject. The very sorts of degrees the holders of which Neil Godfrey regularly disparages."

It seems we have been bumping heads for no reason! It seems that you are saying that over the years Christian historians (mystics) have found very scant evidence of the historicity of Jesus persuasive and have not treated historical sources the same across the board.

I guess the best place to go from here would be to analyze the best historical evidence we have for an historical Jesus! Some of the records I have read, place him around 100 or so, BCE!

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Some of the records I have read, place him around 100 or so, BCE!

Which comic book did you get that out of?

I like the Hulk and Spiderman -- some Batman comics are pretty good, too. I once read and amazing story in a leather-bound book. I read it when I was in detention in high school. I've read a TON of comics, but never one that ventured into the date of Jesus's life. I haven't kept up with all the graphic novels lately -- I've been reading more than a thousand books and scholarly articles on the New Testament and Roman history.

So I don't doubt that a recent comic book dates Jesus in the 1st century BCE, I just haven't read a comic in years.

 

[michaelsherlock]

Which comic book did you get that out of?

I like the Hulk and Spiderman -- some Batman comics are pretty good, too. I once read and amazing story in a leather-bound book. I read it when I was in detention in high school. I've read a TON of comics, but never one that ventured into the date of Jesus's life. I haven't kept up with all the graphic novels lately -- I've been reading more than a thousand books and scholarly articles on the New Testament and Roman history.

So I don't doubt that a recent comic book dates Jesus in the 1st century BCE, I just haven't read a comic in years.

The Toledoth Yeshu

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It seems we have been bumping heads for no reason! It seems that you are saying that over the years Christian historians (mystics)

Mythicists, not mystics. You need to read your link more carefully. The whole post is about mythicists. The term "mythicists" refers to those who think that Jesus is only a myth and there's no evidence for him as a historical individual.

Your link is disagreeing completely with everything your saying. It's a post by professor and specialist on this subject criticizing the methods, practices, and biases of mythicists, not mystics. When the author states mythicists aren't taken seriously by historians (and that they aren't historians), he's talking about people like you: those who believe we don't have persuasive evidence for a historical Jesus.

 

[fallingblood]

The Toledoth Yeshu

That is a horrible source. Really, that source is only good to show a polemical attack against Jesus. As a historical source, there is no reason to think that it is reliable.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

As I have said, quite a few times now, I understand that the issue of historical person, versus magic son of one of the Jewish tribal gods (YHWH) are two seperate issues, yet apologists tend to think that one relates somehow to the other and so I am addressing the initial post in such a manner as is appropriate for the mind of the OP.

Nice ad hominem ... nothing more.