Jesus or Christ Myth Theory

[angellous_evangellous]

Once I stumped my toe on a dead cat.

Now that was just as relevant and useful as the previous post. Frubals!

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Now that was just as relevant and useful as the previous post. Frubals!

The youthfulness of your agile mind is only eclipsed by your elegant sense of humor.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

The two source rule and its application was pointed out to me by a professional historian

Generally, I'm accused of appealing to authority when I cite specialist literature the way that specialists do (whatever their academic field). The real fallacy is citing an authority who isn't a specialist, which is why it is generally included among classical fallacies: appeals to the pope or some king about the nature of physics are worthless (at least insofar as such appeals rely on the ecclesiastical or political authority rather than authoritative knowledge of physics).

You appeal to a single, anonymous source. If someone argues that Jesus is historical and appeals to a priest like J. P. Meier, I can at least check out his qualifications (and, in Meier's case, read his 4-volume scholarly behemoth A Marginal Jew on the historical Jesus). When you refer to a nameless "historian", I have to take your word for it which runs counter to my education, my academic publications, and my knowledge of historical scholarship, historical methods, and historical research.

are you a professional historian?

No. I'm a professional researcher, but mostly in neuroscience, mathematics, and theoretical physics. However, I don't expect anybody to rely on my word (especially not on an online forum). If I assert something about the rampant misuse of statistical significance testing across the sciences or the nature of historical methods, I have no problem using specialist literature to support my statements. A professional historian who can't find professional historical sources to support their view is no better than an amateur.

I assume that one would learn about this in a class in historical research methods at the undergraduate level, but I really don't know.

That I do know. I have an undergraduate major in ancient historical studies, I had to take historical methods courses, and I had to have my papers on history (including those on figures from antiquity like Socrates, Jesus, Euripides, & Caesar) reviewed by professors of history and by anonymous reviewers (e.g., of journals).

I deeply resent the implication that I made it up, especially when it seems far more likely that someone made up your Jesus.

How likely something is seems to me to be intuitively related to one's knowledge of the probability space. I started with history before realizing I loved mathematics and loved the sciences, but I never stopped with the former and I learned several languages that are useless except to keep up with historical scholarship. I can certainly be wrong- I have been before and will be again- but so far I have to weigh thousands of works of historical scholarship against a claim that you correctly interpreted what you assert a single anonymous historian said to you.

The evidence against such an historian's statement being correct is not only vast, but easily tested: there are mountains of literature which demonstrate this "two contemporaneous source" criterion is bogus (especially given that "contemporaneous" refers to time of composition, which is so completely irrelevant to ancient history given what we know from textual criticism it boggles the mind).

The evidence for Jesus is incredibly substantial relative to that for other figures from antiquity. Unfortunately, "relative" here is telling: we have virtually no evidence for the existence of most of the figures that come down to us both several hundred years before and after Jesus. Virtually all our sources are corrupted, the best ancient historians incorporated myth and legend into their works, and when we do have a fair number of sources for the historicity of some individual they always disagree (and, for many we don't always know whether the sources are evidence for the same individual, as so many shared the same name yet had different identifiers:

First, other historians have argued, unlike Carrier, that this individual is the same one we know of as Dioscurides Phacus. Second, what sources does Carrier use here? Two: the Dictionary of Scientific Biography and The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Why? Because all the information we have on this individual is passing references in much later works.

This is also true of Carrier's sources for the first century individual Archigenes of Apamea, the abovementioned Rufus of Ephesus, Scribonius Largus, Claudius Agathinus, and every other first century person Carrier talks about.

I expect that this rule was not applied to the historicity of Jesus

It isn't applied anywhere. It's a fiction. It isn't a criterion for historians even when we move from antiquity to today.

because in the past any competent scholar knew that Jesus would fail it

The arguments for mythicism (the notion that there is no historical Jesus upon which the legends and myths in the NT and extracanonical sources are based) had more proponents in the 19th century and early 20th than in the last century. The reason we speak of the "quest for the historical Jesus" is due to a single publication by Schweitzer published in the first years of the 20th century. The 2nd edition of this book addresses the mythical arguments that existed when most historians were armchair historians and both historical studies as well as the social sciences were in their infancy. Every re-hashed argument mythicists find convincing was addressed anywhere from over a century ago to a few decades ago yet continue to be regurgitated ad nauseum. With the exception of Socrates, scholarly study of the historical figure of Jesus (including whether there is any) is only the oldest example of modern historical-critical study, and no figure has been subjected to more scrutiny by modern historians. Historians and philosophers of history and historiography have documented the ways in which biblical studies created not only modern historical methods but also comparative/historical linguistics. True, the relationship has long sense become an artifact of history itself, but the introduction of competent historians without any knowledge of biblical studies or ancient history hasn't somehow decreased the quality of historical Jesus studies. In fact, few fields of historical inquiry can match the incorporation of methods from linguistics, cognitive science, social psychology, etc., as can be seen in historical Jesus research.

You criticize me for doubting any historians use the criterion you state is a requirement. However, you also criticize thousands of scholars in fields it seems you aren't familiar with whose work you don't appear to know by calling them incompetent.

 

[Bunyip]

Once I stumped my toe on a dead cat.

Given that you are staff, I hate to think you are just trolling.

Perhaps leave the seemingly random sentences unposted.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Given that you are staff, I hate to think you are just trolling.

Perhaps leave the seemingly random sentences unposted.

Perhaps say something useful.

Or you could just pretend to do so - I don't really care.

 

[outhouse]

Perhaps say something useful.

.

12 string - YouTube

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Given that you are staff, I hate to think you are just trolling.

Just a second. You're applying a double standard here. What gives you the right to post something irrelevant and useless when I cannot?

Second point - I only made one post to prove a very important point, and I immediately made that point clear in case the reader missed it.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

[youtube]K6cXSwrYNXI[/youtube]
12 string - YouTube

God bless you.:clap

 

[Bunyip]

Perhaps say something useful.

Or you could just pretend to do so - I don't really care.

Why not take your own advice? Rather than posting gibberish.

Or at the very least make some kind of rational argument.

Inferences to the best explanation are not conclusions, the historicity of Jesus is an inference to the best explanation and therefore is not conclusive.

What are you struggling with there?

 

[Bunyip]

Just a second. You're applying a double standard here. What gives you the right to post something irrelevant and useless when I cannot?

Second point - I only made one post to prove a very important point, and I immediately made that point clear in case the reader missed it.

That is just a particularly childish ad hominem attack. Why not respond with a reasoned argument instead of the schoolyard taunts?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

What are you struggling with there?

Relevancy. Relevancy. Relevancy.

I repeated it three times just in case you miss it the first two.

Then there's:

Usefulness. Usefulness. Usefulness.

I can do that in Latin if you prefer.

 

[steeltoes]

YES! And why is there no specific mention of the non-existence of Smurfs in ancient Palestine? Why are there no records of people refuting the Space Penguin invasion of 3BC?
Why do we find no records whatsoever of people refuting that Galilee was entirely made of marshmallows?
Gosh, your right - Jesus must be historical and so must be Smurfs and Space Penguins! Thank goodness at least we have you to teach us how to do history!



So let me understand your thinking here:
1. There are no contemporary records of Jesus.
2. However because there are no contemporary records specifically mentioning the non-existence of Jesus......
then 3. Therefore he must be real.

It is almost as awful as your usual demand that people must provide a satisfactory alternate explanation for evidence that does not even exist.

Think harder, and stop insulting other people's scholarship - yours is abominable.

Like Sapiens said...... you might as well have fun with the myth.

 

[Bunyip]

Relevancy. Relevancy. Relevancy.

I repeated it three times just in case you miss it the first two.

Then there's:

Usefulness. Usefulness. Usefulness.

I can do that in Latin if you prefer.

My comment was pertinent and relevant, repeat the same mantra as often as you wish - it is a shamefully poor substitute for a rational response.

This thread discusses the Jesus myth theory, if you can not grasp the relevance of my comment thatis a failure on your part, not mine.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

My comment was pertinent and relevant, repeat the same mantra as often as you wish - it is a shamefully poor substitute for a rational response.

This thread discusses the Jesus myth theory, if you can not grasp the relevance of my comment thatis a failure on your part, not mine.

It's difficult to pretend like I don't know what I'm talking about to participate in a discussion with people who know know nothing about the topic, and get farther away from the topic instead of closer by posting irrelevant and useless crap.

Keep it up - you might understand something by accident. Maybe.

 

[Bunyip]

Like Sapiens said...... you might as well have fun with the myth.

Sure. I do find it fascinating how desperately some people defend the historicity of Jesus - whilst at the same time mocking mercilessly any who actually do understand the nature of historical research- and correctly point out that an inference to the best explanation is ineffect just a guess.

 

[Bunyip]

e

It's difficult to pretend like I don't know what I'm talking about to participate in a discussion with people who know know nothing about the topic, and get farther away from the topic instead of closer by posting irrelevant and useless crap.

Keep it up - you might understand something by accident. Maybe.

Yet again you post childish bluster and personal insult. For someone who claims that it is difficult for you to pretend not to know what you are talking about - you sure are doing a good job of appearingto be clueless.

Can you actually engage intelligently on the point at hand?

What is it about the fact that the historicity of Jesus is an inference and not a conclusion that you are struggling with?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Of course historians doubt his existence

"But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria we should apply to the other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. Certainly, there are all those discrepancies between one Gospel and another. But we do not deny that an event ever took place just because pagan historians such as, for example, Livy and Polybius, happen to have described it in differing terms. That there was a growth of legend around Jesus cannot be denied, and it arose very quickly. But there had also been a rapid growth of legends round pagan figures like Alexander the Great; and yet nobody regards him as wholly mythical and fictitious. To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years, 'no serious scholars has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus'"

p. 200 of Grant, M. (1977). Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels. Scribner's.

"The question ‘Did Jesus exist?’ seemed likely to be of central importance to it, though professional scholars generally regard it as having been settled in serious scholarship long ago."

Casey, M. (2010). Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his Life and Teaching. Continuum.

I could keep going forever quoting scholars in multiple fields over the last few decades to indicate not only that historians agree Jesus existed (and a few other facts about him, such as when he lived and that he was executed), but given how hard it is to find a single scholar with a relevant specialty who doubts Jesus existed, why not provide some evidence for the claim that "of course historians doubt" what Price, Carrier, and perhaps 1 or 2 other biblical scholars/historians/etc. doubt? That is, do you base your assessment on what historians do or don't think on what they actually think, or what you believe they should?

there is barely a shred of evidence for the life of Jesus.

There is more evidence for the historical figure of Jesus than for virtually anybody from antiquity. However, most don't know what the nature of such evidence is. They don't read Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or even the modern languages of historical scholarship (German, French, & Italian). They haven't studied textual criticism. They accept the categorization of "historiography" vs. "myth" (or novel, legend, narrative, etc.) based upon whether some Greek or Roman author is described as an historian regardless of the extent to which said author relies on myth and legend. They are unaware of the ways in which specialists determine whether a work from antiquity was likely written by whomever claimed it was let alone how many works (from personal letters to theological treatises) were written by anonymous authors who claimed to be some famous author.

It's hard to determine whether there exists a "shred of evidence" for any historical figure from the classical or medieval world vs. another if one isn't familiar with the nature of the evidence. For example, groundbreaking work in classical studies, NT studies, and historical Jesus studies (resulting in, among other things, peer-reviewed journals, novel methods used by other historians of ancient history, and new areas of research) has shown that the gospels belong to a kind of ancient biography such as those written by Philostratus, Diogenes Laertius, Seutonius, etc., but that this category (as well as the gospels' membership in it) is fuzzy enough such that classical historian Loveday Alexander has argued the author of Luke-Acts wrote something more akin to a technical treatise.

As for Julius Ceaser there is a vast body of contemporary evidence.

We have multiple works attributed to Caesar and contemporaries as well as near contemporaries. We don't have any of these works. What we have are copies of copies of copies that are almost all over 1,000 years older than the first manuscript witness (a papyri scrap from the gospel of John). These disagree, they all contain errors, and we are almost completely ignorant of what the original texts looked like compared to our knowledge of the original NT texts.

I could go on, and talk about the ways in which the general tendencies in antiquity to write texts in the name of another (famous) author or figure render irrelevant any attribution to Caesar or contemporary author any copies of texts we consider evidence for Caesar. I could add that any epigraphic, archaeological, autographic letters/documents, etc., that ARE contemporaneous can be compared for evidence of clearly mythical gods/heros. And I could continue to poke holes in our evidence for Caesar by exploiting individual problems with our sources, ignoring any holistic analysis of them, and ignoring the most important aspect of historiography: what the best explanation given the evidence is. But Caesar was a historical figure, and obviously so. He's one of the few for which we have more evidence than we have for Jesus. The point, though, is that the evidence for Caesar is excepted, in general, as uncritically by most as the evidence for Jesus is by those that believe the NT was inspired by god. When you accept that we have good sources for some historical figure from antiquity without being familiar with either the evidence for that figure or the nature of ancient historical evidence, comparisons are pointless.

it is a rational conclusion based upon the dearth of contemporary evidence.

Let's ignore, for the moment, the contemporary evidence that is accepted by historians, and instead apply the uncritical assessment for figures like Caesar, Nero, Socrates, Pythagoras, Cicero, Hippocrates, Augustus, etc. For Jesus, then, we have two disciples who wrote accounts of his mission. We have his twin brother writing about him. We have his brother James writing about him. We have his lead disciple Peter and his lead disciple's "secretary" (Mark) writing about him. And so on. Of course, this is mostly nonsense or worse. The account by his twin brother is not only written long after Jesus but attributed to a fiction. The various accounts by those like Peter or Mary are even later and clearly fictional (and, in fact, there is some disagreement as to who the Mary of the gnostic texts is). As for the only early sources, those that are biographical were almost certainly not written by the traditional authors but are rather anonymously written. The clearly contemporary sources-by Paul-contain little to know information about Jesus and it is highly likely that Paul never knew Jesus (only his followers and at least one family member).

As has been pointed out before Schweitzer and continually since, though, such problems and others exist for all evidence for all persons from antiquity. Almost always, we have far less evidence and it is far more problematic.

 

[angellous_evangellous]

e

Yet again you post childish bluster and personal insult. For someone who claims that it is difficult for you to pretend not to know what you are talking about - you sure are doing a good job of appearingto be clueless.

Can you actually engage intelligently on the point at hand?

What is it about the fact that the historicity of Jesus is an inference and not a conclusion that you are struggling with?

I understand that this is painful for you.

I am under no burden to prove to you that you're off topic. To do so, I would carry the thread more off topic than it already is. I can simply do what you did and point out that your post was useless and irrelevant. You merely said that our friend was committing a logical fallacy, but were too lazy or incompetent to do so. That might be why you chose not to quote him and just make the baseless comment.

I will continue to try and be clueless. I thought that I was failing at that, but I hardly think that you're a qualified judge.

 

[Bunyip]

"But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria we should apply to the other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned.

But of course historians DO apply those same criteria to other characters and the historicity of any of them is open to speculation.

Certainly, there are all those discrepancies between one Gospel and another. But we do not deny that an event ever took place just because pagan historians such as, for example, Livy and Polybius, happen to have described it in differing terms. That there was a growth of legend around Jesus cannot be denied, and it arose very quickly. But there had also been a rapid growth of legends round pagan figures like Alexander the Great; and yet nobody regards him as wholly mythical and fictitious.

The point is that nobrody claims that the historicity of Alexander has been proven, it is still open for speculation.

To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years, 'no serious scholars has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus'"

Many serious scholars have done so, you are wrong.

p. 200 of Grant, M. (1977). Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels. Scribner's.

"The question ‘Did Jesus exist?’ seemed likely to be of central importance to it, though professional scholars generally regard it as having been settled in serious scholarship long ago."

Casey, M. (2010). Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his Life and Teaching. Continuum.

I could keep going forever quoting scholars in multiple fields over the last few decades to indicate not only that historians agree Jesus existed (and a few other facts about him, such as when he lived and that he was executed), but given how hard it is to find a single scholar with a relevant specialty who doubts Jesus existed, why not provide some evidence for the claim that "of course historians doubt" what Price, Carrier, and perhaps 1 or 2 other biblical scholars/historians/etc. doubt? That is, do you base your assessment on what historians do or don't think on what they actually think, or what you believe they should?


There is more evidence for the historical figure of Jesus than for virtually anybody from antiquity.

Now that is just nonsense - there is a far greater body of evidence for many other historical figures, at the very least for every single historical figure that unlike Jesus we have contemporary evidence for.

However, most don't know what the nature of such evidence is. They don't read Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or even the modern languages of historical scholarship (German, French, & Italian). They haven't studied textual criticism. They accept the categorization of "historiography" vs. "myth" (or novel, legend, narrative, etc.) based upon whether some Greek or Roman author is described as an historian regardless of the extent to which said author relies on myth and legend. They are unaware of the ways in which specialists determine whether a work from antiquity was likely written by whomever claimed it was let alone how many works (from personal letters to theological treatises) were written by anonymous authors who claimed to be some famous author.

It's hard to determine whether there exists a "shred of evidence" for any historical figure from the classical or medieval world vs. another if one isn't familiar with the nature of the evidence. For example, groundbreaking work in classical studies, NT studies, and historical Jesus studies (resulting in, among other things, peer-reviewed journals, novel methods used by other historians of ancient history, and new areas of research) has shown that the gospels belong to a kind of ancient biography such as those written by Philostratus, Diogenes Laertius, Seutonius, etc., but that this category (as well as the gospels' membership in it) is fuzzy enough such that classical historian Loveday Alexander has argued the author of Luke-Acts wrote something more akin to a technical treatise.




We have multiple works attributed to Caesar and contemporaries as well as near contemporaries. We don't have any of these works. What we have are copies of copies of copies that are almost all over 1,000 years older than the first manuscript witness (a papyri scrap from the gospel of John). These disagree, they all contain errors, and we are almost completely ignorant of what the original texts looked like compared to our knowledge of the original NT texts.

I could go on, and talk about the ways in which the general tendencies in antiquity to write texts in the name of another (famous) author or figure render irrelevant any attribution to Caesar or contemporary author any copies of texts we consider evidence for Caesar. I could add that any epigraphic, archaeological, autographic letters/documents, etc., that ARE contemporaneous can be compared for evidence of clearly mythical gods/heros. And I could continue to poke holes in our evidence for Caesar by exploiting individual problems with our sources, ignoring any holistic analysis of them, and ignoring the most important aspect of historiography: what the best explanation given the evidence is. But Caesar was a historical figure, and obviously so. He's one of the few for which we have more evidence than we have for Jesus. The point, though, is that the evidence for Caesar is excepted, in general, as uncritically by most as the evidence for Jesus is by those that believe the NT was inspired by god. When you accept that we have good sources for some historical figure from antiquity without being familiar with either the evidence for that figure or the nature of ancient historical evidence, comparisons are pointless.



Let's ignore, for the moment, the contemporary evidence that is accepted by historians, and instead apply the uncritical assessment for figures like Caesar, Nero, Socrates, Pythagoras, Cicero, Hippocrates, Augustus, etc. For Jesus, then, we have two disciples who wrote accounts of his mission. We have his twin brother writing about him. We have his brother James writing about him. We have his lead disciple Peter and his lead disciple's "secretary" (Mark) writing about him. And so on. Of course, this is mostly nonsense or worse. The account by his twin brother is not only written long after Jesus but attributed to a fiction. The various accounts by those like Peter or Mary are even later and clearly fictional (and, in fact, there is some disagreement as to who the Mary of the gnostic texts is). As for the only early sources, those that are biographical were almost certainly not written by the traditional authors but are rather anonymously written. The clearly contemporary sources-by Paul-contain little to know information about Jesus and it is highly likely that Paul never knew Jesus (only his followers and at least one family member).

As has been pointed out before Schweitzer and continually since, though, such problems and others exist for all evidence for all persons from antiquity. Almost always, we have far less evidence and it is far more problematic.

 

[Bunyip]

I understand that this is painful for you.

I am under no burden to prove to you that you're off topic. To do so, I would carry the thread more off topic than it already is. I can simply do what you did and point out that your post was useless and irrelevant. You merely said that our friend was committing a logical fallacy, but were too lazy or incompetent to do so. That might be why you chose not to quote him and just make the baseless comment.

I will continue to try and be clueless. I thought that I was failing at that, but I hardly think that you're a qualified judge.

Please go and troll elsewhere. This is not appropriate.