Was Jesus an Historical Person?

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Your assumptions are baseless, whether about me or about your historical Jesus, of which you can know nothing about in either case.

Nothing about you?

I am curious as to if and what historians can say about a Jesus of history vs the Jesus of legend and myth that we are all familiar with. Apparently it's not so cut and dry since anyone that ever wrote about Jesus never met the guy. I've tried discussing this topic on other forums but it's just too emotionally charged for some, I hope that's not the case here.

So you don't care about this issue, but you have brought it up on "other forums" in addition to devoting so many of your posts here to the question. And either you honestly don't what what historians say (which indicates you haven't read them), or you do know and are being dishonest.

I have no opinion as to Jesus' place in history because I don't know to what extent he is historical if at all.

I don't buy the historical Jesus from what we have

How do you have "no opinion" about Jesus' place in history if you "don't buy the historical Jesus" with the evidence we have?

Then there's your depiction of biblical scholars and historical Jesus research. First, you chide them for being dismissive of those who haven't studied but nonetheless criticize their work and their expertise acquired through years and years of hard work:

Considering the disdain offered by those of a traditional historical view of Jesus towards those that have doubts about that view, you wouldn't know that the traditional view wasn't holy and off limits to questions.

Then you show at least as much disdain you critique specialists for having, only without any justification:

Biblical scholars are not historians, which is why the biblical Jesus just happens to turn out to be the historical Jesus when left up to the biblical scholar.

In fact, if you want to read some fine scholarship avoid historical Jesus. Biblical scholars doing historical Jesus is not so good. I would recommend Who Wrote The Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman.

Then you add accusations of bias to these insults:

The so called consensus, what is that other than an opinion held by a majority of Christian scholars, an appeal to tradition or the bandwagon fallacy.

Consider the so called consensus, it hardly reflects an agnostic position, one of not knowing whether Jesus existed or not with the information that we have. The so called consensus is that Jesus existed. Who are these agnostic scholars you know of that don't know if Jesus existed or not?

You've also indicated where you get your information:

Philo may have influenced the writer of John, he wrote some essays about the word and logos. I will try to find them online.

And no, I am not that familiar with Ehrman, other than what I have come across online.

Yet even when asked to produce something you show you are actually familiar with the work of the scholars you criticize, you don't:

So quote some scholars.

Scholars that read Greek contradict each other as to how 'brother of the Lord' can be interpreted. Maybe when the experts get it together we might know something.

You insult the expertise of scholars, you accuse them of bias, and you make generalized claims about their work. What you don't do is provide a single example of scholarship you are familiar with, despite requests.

As for p52:

I was well acquainted with p52 dating years before this thread came about which is why I questioned your narrow window for its dating when I came across it.

"Well acquainted"?

As long as this date for John from 125 - 150 CE is in any way accurate.

Here's an actual, relevant issue we can discuss thanks to its very specific nature. Given how "well-acquainted" you are, you should be able to present good reason other than relying on the authority of a few scholars mentinoed in a wiki article.



First, there's this

The wiki contained a reason for a wider range of dates which you ignored in favour of appeals to authority.

Going to wikipedia is an appeal to authority. The only differences between what I do (in terms of appeal to authority) and going to wikipedia are

1) the appeal is indirect, as you are relying on wikipedia which is at best an accurately summary of scholarship (and at worst is a misleading and inaccurate portrayal). In other words, while I "appeal" directly to scholarship I've read, you appeal to the summaries of some of this scholarship supplied by others.
2) Wikipdedia relies entirely on scholarship, but only a small subset which is (again, at best) a fairly representative summarized view coming from a much, much, much larger amount of scholarship. So not only does appealing to wikipedia mean an appeal to authority you haven't read, it also necessarily means that you are necessarily appealing to a very limited amount, and further that you don't know how much or what you are missing.
3) Your appeal to authority in this case (with p52) isn't even a typical indirect appeal to scholarship through wikipedia. You actually ignore most of the page in favor of what little supports your doubt.

So you do appeal to authority, and you did in this case as well. Which makes the following especially amusing:

"So I leave it to the experts, and they have a consensus." Of course the experts are the ones that favour a narrow early window for dating with no line of reason supplied by you as to how it discounts a wider range.

You claim that you were already "well-acquainted" with p52. One wonders first, then, why you appealed indirectly to a few authorities in a wiki article, rather than the sources you used to become "well-acquainted".

Additionally, the only people who can date papyri are experts. The difference is not that I am "leaving it to the experts" while you are doing something different. It's simply that you are choosing to favor the few who don't agree with the majority. You haven't given any reason to, of course, nor any indication (despite my bringing this up frequently) that you have a reason. If you reallly are familiar with p52, then I'd be mroe than happy to discuss the points raised by the sources you have used to form your opinion.

You've repeated this over and over again. So often that I actually asked you for your sources and what you are relying on for your views about the historical Jesus.

When I quoted Wells, you used what wikipedia said about him to rebut what he himself said. The only names you've mentioned are those typical for mythicists: Wells, Doherty, Price, Ehrman, etc. In other words, all authors who have published popular works for people who are not familiar with historical Jesus research.

The only other author you referenced again demonstrates your familiarity:

I thought it was Strauss that explained gospel miracles as natural events, whatever, the point I make on topic is that historical Jesus is still up for debate.

 

[steeltoes]

Still can't come up with anything about Jesus, so you take it out on me, good on you.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Still can't come up with anything about Jesus, so you take it out on me, good on you.

I did. Your response was:

I read your post #246, you are hardly one to judge anyone or anything. Convincing yourself that the gospels are an "historiography" so that you can read your Bible as if Jesus is historical is what I would expect to read on a website such as this. Unbelievable.

Not only did you not actually address anything I brought up, you limited your response to an insult pertaining to my categorization of gospel genre. You didn't offer any analysis of your own, nor did you even mention other points.

However, I am happy to start a discussion about gospel genre and you can inform me how you understand their literary context and why, along with why I am wrong.

First, we need to look at what ancient fiction and ancient myth looked like, and why neither are appropriate designations for the genre of the gospels. They would not be equated to myths in the ancient world, even by non-christians. Indeed, we can see similar stories told about Pythagoras, Alexander the Great, Apollonius of Tyana, Caesar, and others.What we consider myths of the Greco-Roman world (e.g., the Homeric epics) were similar in ways that don't hold for the gospels. The gospels, for example, aren't in meter. They don't situate the stories they tell in some ambiguous time long, long ago such that nobody can check the facts or would even care to, as the reception of myth was not about the details (the most famous version of Medea's story, in which she kills her own children, was an addition added by Euripides), but about both entertainment and the transmission of culture through a collection of loosely connected, often contradicting body of stories connecting the present to the distant past (usually linking the present to some ancient founding hero/warrior, demi-god, or actual god, or multiple warriors, demi-gods, and/or gods).

The gospels do have literary parallels in the ancient world. In fact, the same stories about Alexander the Great or Caesar which include miracles and so forth are types of ancient biographies, and fall into a (rather nebulous) genre to which the gospels belong.

The gospel authors relied on the Greek historiographic literary tradition, which also influenced the later pre-Christian Jewish writings. Aristotle explicitly seperates history from other literature in his Poetics: Φανερὸν δὲ ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων καὶ ὅτι οὐ τὸ τὰ γενόμενα λέγειν, τοῦτο ποιητοῦ ἔργον ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ οἷα ἂν γένοιτο καὶ τὰ δυνατὰ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον. ὁ γὰρ ἱστορικὸς καὶ ὁ ποιητὴς οὐ τῷ ἢ ἔμμετρα λέγειν ἢ ἄμετρα διαφέρουσιν... ἀλλὰ τούτῳ διαφέρει, τῷ τὸν μὲν τὰ γενόμενα λέγειν, τὸν δὲ οἷα ἂν γένοιτο/"It is clear also from what was already stated that the task of the literary artist/poet/writer is not to report things which actually happened but that which may be even as it seems according to possibility or necessity. Indeed, the historian and the composer differ not either in writing verse or meter...but differ with respect to this: the [former] one reports the things which happened, and the other that which may be."


Although later authors tended to view Herodotus' work disdainfully, from Thucydides not-so-subtle commentary to the work by Lucian devoted to its faults, there is no doubt that his investigations (and the use of the Greek word for this, which is where the word history comes from) began a Greek literary tradition defined by reporting what happened. And within a very short time this tradition was adopted and developed elsewhere. About a century before the first Christian texts (by Paul) were written, Cicero's dialogue On the Laws features a conversation between two characters and in which the duties of the historian, vs. the composer, are made plain. The character Quintus agrees with the statement by Atticus (that "historia leges obseruandas putare/the rules the historian ought to observe") are different from those the composer of literary works must follow. He goes on to note the partial failure of Herodotus and Theopompus as historians, a failure due to the fact that in their histories "sunt innumerabiles fabulae/there are numerous fables/stories".

Ancient histories, especially the lesser ones, had many flaws, from the rationalizing or inclusion of mythic elements and the tendency (especially in biographical-type historiography such as the gospels) to include legendary feats/miracles/etc., to an overly uncritical assessment of sources. But neither authors nor readers confused "historical" writing (i.e., writing intended to report what happened) and with other types of composition (drama, epic, allegory, fables, etc.). Nor were ancient audiences so gullible they believed whatever they were told. We know of an early non-Christian account of Jesus' birth in which he is simply illegitimate, not born of a virgin. But accounts of magic-workers and miracle-makers were around before the gospels and continue to today. The fact that the gospel authors believed the founder of their movement performed miracles and was divine is no different than claims made then about other people (from emperors to mystics) and our records from the middle-ages to the early modern period are filled with all sorts of accounts, many of them court documents, describing impossible "magical" performances. What defined Greco-Roman historiography was not whether it contained miracles or magic, because for one thing there really were (and still are) historical people who were thought capable of working wonders and incidents in which witnesses believed they had seen these. What defines ancient historiography is the aim: to tell what happened so that there is a permanent record.

Nor is this limited to the Greco-Roman writing of history. In close proximity to the "historical' Jewish writings we have examples like the Babylonian Chronicles. The evolution we find in the Greek tradition (already well-developed by the time we get to the Roman historians who borrowed from it) from Herodotus' rather "proto-history" to later and far more self-consious historians is echoed in the Jewish tradition. This is partly because of the influence of hellenism.
Even the bad historians writing poor history (which was more akin to investigative journalism in methodology than to modern historiography) distinguished this genre from allegory and myth. Although they often incorporated legends or referred to myth (often rationalizing it by explaining why the mythic part was wrong), and they certainly included elements (miracles, magic, etc.) which modern historians would not, they did not do this because they were unconcerned with the distinction between reporting what actually happened and ahistorical stories designed to teach a lesson, moral, higher truth, etc. And it is true that literary genres in the ancient world were hardly clear cut (particularly when one includes the traditions of different civilizations). The historiographic tradition which is behind the gospels and at least influenced the later portions of the OT developed in a culture which (like most cultures in and around that time) oriented much of social functioning around cultic practice. From Sumer to Rome, this meant a fairly flexible transmission of received myth, all revolving around an ancient past wholly or mostly divorced from any chronological relation to the present and often geographically divorced as well.

Historical writing, although it borrowed from the story-telling tradition in method, involved the transmission of reports about what actually happened, not stories which designed to teach a lesson. That the distinction between myth, fables, allegory, and/or the literary traditions which revolved around these (e.g., epic and drama) did not exist for the ancient author or audience is not supported by the various discussions we have from that time on this very distinction.


Historiography, both before and after the gospels, had much the same goal then as it does now. Yet from Herodotus to Livy and beyond, history was never free of myth or story-telling. Despite an often conscious and frequently explicit attempt to separate the genre of myth and/or poetry from that of history, “[c]lassical historiography, which was born out of myths and invented “the mythical” as its foil, did not succeed in putting myth out of business.” (Saïd, S. (2011). "Myth and Historiography").

Like the Greco-Roman Lives (a sort of ancient biography) the gospels differ from the historical narrative of e.g., Herodotus in that chronology is far less important than reporting disparate stories signifying the importance of the individual the vita/life is about. Like all ancient historiography, it has many elements which are clearly not historical. However, everything from the use of language (e.g., grammatical tense, or Luke's opening) to the use of geography & historical figures and much more locates the genre in the literary tradition of ancient historiography. Moreover, nothing in its structure, form, use of language, etc., is the same as is found in literary genres of fiction and myth.

The fact that the gospels are clearly not akin to modern histories is not a reason to discount them from the genre of ancient histories. To do this, one must compare them both with ancient examples of historiography/biography, and examples of ancient literary genres used to convey fiction and myth. Whe we do this, we find clear parallels between the gospels and ancient historiography, but not the literary genres used for myth or allegory.

 

[steeltoes]

We can look at formal histories written at or around the time and places the gospels may have been written and it becomes readily apparent that historical accounts differed from the style of the gospel narratives. Historical works not only had a table of contents, but the authors actually identified themselves, imagine that if you will.



Here is The Wars of the Jews, by Josephus.

WHEREAS the war which the Jews made with the Romans hath been the greatest of all those, not only that have been in our times, but, in a manner, of those that ever were heard of; both of those wherein cities have fought against cities, or nations against nations; while some men who were not concerned in the affairs themselves have gotten together vain and contradictory stories by hearsay, and have written them down after a sophistical manner; and while those that were there present have given false accounts of things, and this either out of a humor of flattery to the Romans, or of hatred towards the Jews; and while their writings contain sometimes accusations, and sometimes encomiums, but no where the accurate truth of the facts; I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians; Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth a Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, [am the author of this work].
Now at the time when this great concussion of affairs happened, the affairs of the Romans were themselves in great disorder. Those Jews also who were for innovations, then arose when the times were disturbed; they were also in a flourishing condition for strength and riches, insomuch that the affairs of the East were then exceeding tumultuous, while some hoped for gain, and others were afraid of loss in such troubles; for the Jews hoped that all of their nation which were beyond Euphrates would have raised an insurrection together with them.
- Josephus; The Wars of the Jews, 70 CE


​

History of Rome, by Roman historian Livy around 30 BCE:

To begin with, it is generally admitted that after the capture of Troy, whilst the rest of the Trojans were massacred, against two of them--Aeneas and Antenor--the Achivi refused to exercise the rights of war, partly owing to old ties of hospitality, and partly because these men had always been in favour of making peace and surrendering Helen. Their subsequent fortunes were different. Antenor sailed into the furthest part of the Adriatic, accompanied by a number of Enetians who had been driven from Paphlagonia by a revolution and after losing their king Pylaemenes before Troy were looking for a settlement and a leader. The combined force of Enetians and Trojans defeated the Euganei, who dwelt between the sea and the Alps and occupied their land. The place where they disembarked was called Troy, and the name was extended to the surrounding district; the whole nation were called Veneti. Similar misfortunes led to Aeneas becoming a wanderer but the Fates were preparing a higher destiny for him. He first visited Macedonia, then was carried down to Sicily in quest of a settlement; from Sicily he directed his course to the Laurentian territory. Here, too, the name of Troy is found, and here the Trojans disembarked, and as their almost infinite wanderings had left them nothing but their arms and their ships, they began to plunder the neighbourhood. The Aborigines, who occupied the country, with their king Latinus at their head came hastily together from the city and the country districts to repel the inroads of the strangers by force of arms.
From this point there is a twofold tradition. According to the one, Latinus was defeated in battle, and made peace with Aeneas, and subsequently a family alliance. According to the other, whilst the two armies were standing ready to engage and waiting for the signal, Latinus advanced in front of his lines and invited the leader of the strangers to a conference.
- Livy; History of Rome, 30 BCE



Tacitus,

I BEGIN my work with the time when Servius Galba was consul for the second time with Titus Vinius for his colleague. Of the former period, the 820 years dating from the founding of the city, many authors have treated; and while they had to record the transactions of the Roman people, they wrote with equal eloquence and freedom. After the conflict at Actium, and when it became essential to peace, that all power should be centered in one man, these great intellects passed away. Then too the truthfulness of history was impaired in many ways; at first, through men's ignorance of public affairs, which were now wholly strange to them, then, through their passion for flattery, or, on the other hand, their hatred of their masters. And so between the enmity of the one and the servility of the other, neither had any regard for posterity. But while we instinctively shrink from a writer's adulation, we lend a ready ear to detraction and spite, because flattery involves the shameful imputation of servility, whereas malignity wears the false appearance of honesty. I myself knew nothing of Galba, of Otho, or of Vitellius, either from benefits or from injuries. I would not deny that my elevation was begun by Vespasian, augmented by Titus, and still further advanced by Domitian; but those who profess inviolable truthfulness must speak of all without partiality and without hatred. I have reserved as an employment for my old age, should my life be long enough, a subject at once more fruitful and less anxious in the reign of the Divine Nerva and the empire of Trajan, enjoying the rare happiness of times, when we may think what we please, and express what we think.
I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four emperors perished by the sword. There were three civil wars; there were more with foreign enemies; there were often wars that had both characters at once.
- Tacitus; The Histories, 109 CE


​

Mark, of which other gospels are based on does not read like history. Mark has a plot, characters are developed, there are scenes, scenes with Jesus alone with his thoughts, suspense, and a build up to a climax.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

We can look at formal histories written at or around the time and places the gospels may have been written and it becomes readily apparent that historical accounts differed from the style of the gospel narratives.

IThe gospels do have literary parallels in the ancient world. In fact, the same stories about Alexander the Great or Caesar which include miracles and so forth are types of ancient biographies, and fall into a (rather nebulous) genre to which the gospels belong....
Like the Greco-Roman Lives (a sort of ancient biography) the gospels differ from the historical narrative of e.g., Herodotus in that chronology is far less important than reporting disparate stories signifying the importance of the individual the vita/life is about.

You picked examples which
1) I specifically stated were of a different type of ancient history
and
2) which you describe as if you've never actually read them or any historical texts from around that time (even in translation).

I go into detail about the nature of your claims about ancient history in two subsequent posts which indicate that either the classicists, historians, and other specialists who aren't biblical scholars are wrong and don't know their own fields, or you don't know what you are talking about. Here, however, I apparently need to reinforce what you missed in my post: the difference between "historical narrative" and the biographical historiography of the gospels.

Your examples are all narrative histories, not the type of history the gospels belong to:

"Biography moves between two poles (without coinciding with either of them): on the one hand, there is the On the spot' portrait, drawn as a whole and consciously neglecting certain details. On the other, there is the continuous narrative, concerned with historical completeness. Unlike the historian, the biographer, even when he is engaged in narrative, is less concerned with historical events as such than with their evidential value for the life in question. This explains why at times he may resort to historically trivial but psychologically revealing anecdotes. Favorite dishes, hobbies, other peculiarities may reflect essential features of character. He chooses his material according to its significance in this sense. Thus it may happen that particular phases of the life, such as youth and final days, may be especially emphasized, while others are passed over...
In practical terms, biographies may be factual sketches in a scholarly vein, or be developed according to literary principles...Biographies were collected and organized according to categories: legislators, tyrants, poets and so on...In the Hellenistic period the growing role of great personalities and of their decisions had led to an increasing influence of biographies (of Alexander) on historical writing In addition to the usual speeches and battie descriptions, literary use is also made of themes drawn from the life of Alexander. With Suetonius, as may be especially seen in the Lives illustrating the year of the four emperors, biography is in open rivalry with history, not in form, but in content and purpose...
The adoption of elements from Hellenistic miraculous tales and novels fostered the development of a literature combining edification with entertainment...In general, in ancient biography, intellectualism dominates, linked with a moralizing point of view. The value of an individual is determined by free moral decisions, while the milieu is not felt as a determining factor.
Attention to the individual does not mean the same as attention to the private person. The Romans therefore found no reason for not mingling biography and history." from Michael Von Albrecht's A History of Roman Literature: From Livius Andronicus to Boethius (Mnemosyne Supplements)


You are comparing the wrong type of historiography, as both the Greeks and Romans distinguished between "history" (a narrative of events) and "biography" (relating the history of the life of someone deemed important). Try comparing Philostratus' Life of Apollonius instead, or another piece from this genre rather than narrative historiography.

Historical works not only had a table of contents, but the authors actually identified themselves, imagine that if you will.

They frequently didn't even have titles, they were often written under a false name, some were written in sections and many were simply different texts collected by another into one. For many, we don't know who wrote them and they were written about people or events which occured several centuries earlier.

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.

One of the first biographers of Socrates provides a nice illustration. Diogenes Laertius, a historian from the third century CE, wrote a number of Lives of various philosophers, including Plato and Socrates. In his Life of Plato, Diogenes reports that Socrates happened to hear someone reading Plato’s Lysis (a dialogue in which the main character is Socrates) and exclaimed “Ἡράκλεις…ὡς πολλά πολλά μου καταψεύδεθ' ὁ νεανίσκος.’ οὐκ ὀλίγα γὰρ ὧν οὐκ εἴρηκε Σωκράτης γέγραφεν ἁνήρ/By Hercules, how many times that lad [Plato] has lied about me!” (DL 3.35).” The historical accuracy of this account is debatable, but it does indicate that by Diogenes Laertius’ time at least Plato’s depiction of Socrates had been questioned

Mark, of which other gospels are based on does not read like history.

This I address in the later posts, but as I have already responded to claims made about the nature of the gospels and ancient historiography by individuals who haven't actually read much (if any) ancient historical texts, I can add to what I discuss in the folllowing posts by simply quoting myself:

And your exhaustive study of ancient historiography leads you to conclude this because? As the wiki section on gospel genre I wrote over two years ago remains unchanged, see here: Gospel Genre. I'll give you the references I used (I can add more if you wish, as I've read more since then):
Stanton, G. N. (1974). Jesus of Nazareth in New Testament Preaching Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Series 27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Talbert, C. H. (1977). What is a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels. Philadelphia: Fortress Press
Aune, D. E. (1987). The New Testament in Its Literary Environment. Philadelphia: Westminster
Frickenschmidt, D. (1997). Evangelium als Biographie: Die vier Evanelien im Rahmen antiker Erzählkunst. Tübingen: Francke Verlag.
Burridge, R. A. (2004). What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography. rev. updated edn. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans.
Burridge, R. A. (2006). Gospels. In J. W. Rogerson & Judith M. Lieu (Eds) The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.




Overgeneralize enough, and such conclusions are easy. It doesn't make them any less wrong.

EDIT: I was thinking about editing my wiki section now that I've read substantially more, but I noticed that where I referred to various books on the issue someone else added (in the reference section) "page needed". I'm used to citing things according to the practices common in both the social & behavioral sciences and in the humanities. In the former (where quoting itself is discouraged), one almost never cites page numbers. In the latter, one does only when one wishes to refer to a particular section or actually quotes a source.It's standard practice in academic circles to refer to entire works if the entire work is supporting your point. Thus, if I wished to add something to the section like "while some scholars agree with Burridge and Aune that the gospels are as similar to ancient biographies as ancient biographies are to one another, [insert endnote] and that even the heavily theological work of John represents a form of ancient history [insert endnote], a more nuanced aproach to gospel genre is needed [insert endnotes]" I might cite Lawrence Wills' Quest for the Historical Gospel p. 17 for the first endnote, but cite an entire book (e.g., the first volume John, Jesus, and History edited by Anderson, Just, & Thatcher, although in that case citing one of the papers would probably be better) for the next and several entire books for the last (e.g., Loveday Alexander's The Preface to Luke's Gospel). But it seems as if this isn't done on wikipedia. I haven't edited much at all on wiki, nor do I use it very often at all, so perhaps those who are more familiar with wikipedia conventions can help. Is it possible, in accordance with wikipedia citation standards, to cite an entire work in the way done in every academic citation standard I know of? If so, how does one do so?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

We can look at formal histories written at or around the time and places the gospels may have been written

Let's do that, and compare your take, point by point, with what historians and others have noted as well as the content of the actual primary texts.

Point 1:

the authors actually identified themselves

An interesting way we can show how this is false (that is, not all historians did this, and we have plenty of anonymous ancient historical works) is through the Historia Augusta (all quotes relating to this are from Mellor's The Roman Historians; Routledge, 1999). It is a collection of "thirty biographies in all" and the " entire collection covers the period from Hadrian to Numerianus, 117–284 CE." But we immediately run into problems: "scholars gradually proved that most of the 130 documents included range from the suspicious to the outrageously false. The earlier lives, which contain more reliable material that can be cross-checked against other sources, do not contain such documents, but they proliferate in the more suspicious lives. Likewise, many of the names and sources mentioned throughout are fabrications."

Content, however, is not the only issue, as we not only don't know if the work is that of a single author or many, let alone any names. So what do historians do?

"Even if the authors and the date are false, anything we may be able to deduce about them is valuable. There is much reliable history in the early lives, so an understanding of date, authorship, and purpose of the work might help us determine what else is reliable..."

One method for doing this, as Mellor points out, is comparison with other historical works: "Some of the author’s sources are known, though few have survived. For the second century we have a set of biographies as far as Caracalla by an unnamed author—scholars imaginatively call him Ignotus—who seems to have been reasonably reliable"

What's this? Non-biblical scholars using a set of ancient biographies which are known to contain a great deal of lies, pranks/jokes, fictitious characters and sources, etc.? And not only are they using it, but these historians are determining reliability by comparing biographies "by an unnamed author"?

Yes. Because in addition to numerous pseudepigraphical texts, we have many anonymous ones as well. In Liv Mariah Yarrow's Historiography at the End of the Republic: Provincial Perspectives on Roman Rule (Oxford Classical Monographs), we find in the chapter "Theory & Method" the section "Authorial Identity", which begins: "There are six authors whose texts survive in sufficient quantity for consideration when seeking the political significance of history writing during the period from 146 bc to ad 14." Out of these six, two we know almost nothing of, and two are anonymous.

Not that anonymity was the norm. Lucian criticizes historians who do not provide authorship in his De historia conscribenda. But
1) This means that it was done and
2) The NT authors, clearly familiar with Jewish Greek texts, appear to have followed the authors of Jewish historical texts, rather than (as Josephus and Philo did) follow more common practices adopted from the Greeks.



Point 2:

it becomes readily apparent that historical accounts differed from the style of the gospel narratives.

This I already addressed. All the examples given were from a different type of historiography. The authors of the gospels either wrote Greco-Roman biographies, or wrote a version of these which incorporated e.g., Jewish historiography.

But one does not have to take my word for it. In the second volume of A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography, there is a paper by Philip Stadter "Biography and History" which (suprise, suprise) concerns biographical historiography in the Greco-Roman literary tradition. He writes: "Philosophical biography brought out the moral character of its subjects and the relation of their teachings to their lives. Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle, wrote on Pythagoras, Archytas, Socrates, and Plato; Hermippus in the third century wrote Lives of many philosophers, as well as lawgivers and other figures. Diogenes Laertius' extant Lives of the Philosophers continues the tradition." He goes on to state that "the Gospels also belong to this category".

Nor is that the only time the gospels are brought up in this massive two-volume set of papers by historians, classicists, and other non-biblical scholars (which is important, because apparently we can't trust biblical scholars). The opening essay, "The Place of History in the Ancient World" by Roberto Nicolai, concerns the role historiography (the writing of history) played, not just for the authors and their audience, but also how the ways in which it differed from other literature, such as allegory or the various literary expressions of received myth, served a socio-cultural and communal function. One such role concerns morality and ethics, as in other literary genres (fictional/mythic) of the classical world. However, "the role of historiography", differs from these genres in that it "takes for itself the task of preserving and transmitting memory". As the prime example of this, and as his closing statement, Nicolai writes that this "function of history as testimony" can be seen "in the authors of the Gospels", who wrote their religious texts "based on the memory of events and of Jesus’ teaching".

In fact, even for those who do not see the gospels as biographies, this is only because they are do not rely soley on Greco-Roman historiographic tradition.

Potter's Literary Texts and the Roman Historian (from the series Approaching the Ancient World), includes a discussion of the the gospels. As far as the Gospels' literary nature and genre are concerned, Potter states "there are a couple of points that are indisputable". For example, "they all place Jesus in the context of identifiable historical figures, and imply a “real time” chronology for his career". Additionally, "it is arguable then that the Gospels imitate the form of a literary biography". Potter later covers the biographical genre in some detail, and while it is all of interest, here it suffices to note Potter's likening of the gospels to Roman biography.

Finally, if biblical historians are so untrustworthy and biased, one wonders why, in an edited (i.e,. reviewed by an editorial board of specialists) academic work (Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome) by historians for historians and completely seperate from biblical studies, we'd find the following statement in the paper by Simon Goldhill (professor of Greek at Cambridge University): "Most historians believe that the sayings of Jesus circulated separately from the narrative biographies of the Gospels precisely in this form of the chreia: hence one motivation for the considerable interest in them."

Note that the thing Goldhill asserts "most historians believe" concerns the oral circulation of gospel content. He takes as granted that they are biographies, and additionally that there was a Jesus saying things such that they could be incorporated into the "narrative biographies of the gospels".

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Point 3

Mark, of which other gospels are based

That John is independent, and that both Matthew and Luke relied on material outside of Mark, is so widely accepted as obvious that without some basis for the above assertion, I can't address it. However, this:

does not read like history. Mark has a plot, characters are developed, there are scenes, scenes with Jesus alone with his thoughts, suspense, and a build up to a climax.

I can address. One of the classic works on Greek and Roman historians is that of Michael Grant: Greek and Roman Historians:Information and Misinformation. He begins chapter 4 with something anybody who has actually spent time reading ancient historical texts already knows but which is apparently novel for some whose interest in ancient historiography extends only to making unsubstantiated claims about biblical scholarship, the historical Jesus, the gospel genre, etc.

"Of course the historians of Greece and Rome, if they had any success, told an exciting story. If they were going to beguile their audiences with a public reading, as was often the case, the story had to be good and gripping. The distinction between apbegesis (story) and historia (history), even if valid, was not invariably made. After all, what was the use of a history if it was not attractive enough to receive any attention?"

Indeed, we find that Xenophon "was more of a story-teller than a historian", that Tacitus "told some remarkable and not entirely truthful stories himself", and other instances of "invented narrative". This is in addition to the entire section Grant devotes to the influence of religion and religious myth, religious thought, religious worldviews, etc., on Greek and Roman history.

What's so amusing here is that your understanding and familiarity with ancient historiography is based on so little your description of Mark quoted above would qualify it as very good history as far as ancient history goes. Apparently, your understanding of Greco-Roman historians and their work is limited to applying modern distinctions where they don't belong, such that you think describing Mark as a good story with a plot, characters, etc., makes it different from what ancient historians wrote. In reality, ancient historians were considered better if your description of Mark could be applied to them.

 

[s2a]

Why not?



The same was said of many others, from emperors like Augustus to Greek philosophers. Why judge the veracity of ancient sources using a modern yardstick which is bound to confuse, muddle, and render invalid any historical analysis of any ancient sources?


This is completely irrelevant to the issue. But no. I doubt that it will matter one way or the other.




Hopefully, he'd ask that physicists not pretend physics has anything to do with history.

A fine overall summary of the rhetorical foundation of the presented...

...even if "Jesus" (of Nazareth) could be accounted as "an actual person", none of the follow-up inquires would be relevant at all.

Even "history" (within this context of time) is, at best, a "wild guess".

Modern forensics will likely never address with any widespread certainty a validating source of challenging or even experimental insight re: abject claims of spiritual beliefs.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

A fine overall summary of the rhetorical foundation of the presented...

Brilliant, Holmes.

...even if "Jesus" (of Nazareth) could be accounted as "an actual person", none of the follow-up inquires would be relevant at all.

Whatever that nonsense means.

Even "history" (within this context of time) is, at best, a "wild guess".

Oh. So Julius Caesar didn't exist, The Onion could be correct that classical scholars invented the Greek language and wrote The Iliad, and Alexander the Great is as supportable as a historical person as Hector and Achilles. Right.

even experimental insight

Have you ever actually worked as a researcher in some field? If so, do you know what a "literature review" is?

 

[steeltoes]

Point 3

That John is independent, and that both Matthew and Luke relied on material outside of Mark, is so widely accepted as obvious that without some basis for the above assertion, I can't address it. However, this:



I can address. One of the classic works on Greek and Roman historians is that of Michael Grant: Greek and Roman Historians:Information and Misinformation. He begins chapter 4 with something anybody who has actually spent time reading ancient historical texts already knows but which is apparently novel for some whose interest in ancient historiography extends only to making unsubstantiated claims about biblical scholarship, the historical Jesus, the gospel genre, etc.

"Of course the historians of Greece and Rome, if they had any success, told an exciting story. If they were going to beguile their audiences with a public reading, as was often the case, the story had to be good and gripping. The distinction between apbegesis (story) and historia (history), even if valid, was not invariably made. After all, what was the use of a history if it was not attractive enough to receive any attention?"

Indeed, we find that Xenophon "was more of a story-teller than a historian", that Tacitus "told some remarkable and not entirely truthful stories himself", and other instances of "invented narrative". This is in addition to the entire section Grant devotes to the influence of religion and religious myth, religious thought, religious worldviews, etc., on Greek and Roman history.

What's so amusing here is that your understanding and familiarity with ancient historiography is based on so little your description of Mark quoted above would qualify it as very good history as far as ancient history goes. Apparently, your understanding of Greco-Roman historians and their work is limited to applying modern distinctions where they don't belong, such that you think describing Mark as a good story with a plot, characters, etc., makes it different from what ancient historians wrote. In reality, ancient historians were considered better if your description of Mark could be applied to them.

By all means, whatever it takes to convince yourself that the unknown author of gMark was an historian, go for it. :clap

 

[angellous_evangellous]

Mark, of which other gospels are based on does not read like history. Mark has a plot, characters are developed, there are scenes, scenes with Jesus alone with his thoughts, suspense, and a build up to a climax.

This is nuts, man. You're reading in a modern understanding of a novel with an ancient work.

Even if we set this aside, Mark is telling the story of Jesus's life, which is going to have everything that you described.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

By all means, whatever it takes to convince yourself that the unknown author of gMark was an historian, go for it. :clap

For me, it takes significant research, from journals and monographs to learning a half dozen other languages (ancient and modern). You are content to form opinions from youtube and other internet sites. I guess we just have different standards.

 

[steeltoes]

For me, it takes significant research, from journals and monographs to learning a half dozen other languages (ancient and modern). You are content to form opinions from youtube and other internet sites. I guess we just have different standards.

I've read books written for the public by popular biblical scholars on the subject, but you can be an *** if you like, I don't care.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I've read books written for the public by popular biblical scholars on the subject, but you can be an *** if you like, I don't care.

I seem to remember you openly admitting you weren't familiar with the words of one popular author but used interviews to judge him. Or was that someone else? In any case, you've never indicated any reliable sources/scholars you've ever read despite participating in just about every historical jesus thread since you joined (correct me if I'm wrong). So when you display 0 familiarity with the field and don't cite anybody, how is one supposed to know you read a few popular authors writing popular literature?

 

[s2a]

This website explores in depth the historicity of Jesus and his apostles.

*Link Deleted*

At this point in time, I certainly don't believe a miracle working Jesus ever existed, but I do think the story or the legend of Jesus may have been inspired by a real person who lived during that time. . . perhaps Judas the Galilean or one of his sons, James or Simon.

What do you think?

I think ""link deleted"* says more that enough

 

[steeltoes]

I seem to remember you openly admitting you weren't familiar with the words of one popular author but used interviews to judge him. Or was that someone else? In any case, you've never indicated any reliable sources/scholars you've ever read despite participating in just about every historical jesus thread since you joined (correct me if I'm wrong). So when you display 0 familiarity with the field and don't cite anybody, how is one supposed to know you read a few popular authors writing popular literature?

I don't need to cite anybody in order to dismiss your creationist view that the author of gMark was an historian. I mean, c'mon man, let's get reasonable.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I don't need to cite anybody in order to dismiss your creationist view that the author of gMark was an historian. I mean, c'mon man, let's get reasonable.

Ok, let's get reasonable. What qualifies a work as being ancient historiography? Is Plutarch a historian? How about Livy? Herodotus? Diogenes Laertius? Philostratus? Tacitus? Why or why not?

 

[outhouse]

This is nuts, man. You're reading in a modern understanding of a novel with an ancient work.

Even if we set this aside, Mark is telling the story of Jesus's life, which is going to have everything that you described.

Including fiction and mythology.

Doesn't mean the man didn't exist because a Hellenistic author expressed himself compiling a legend in his eyes.

 

[outhouse]

...even if "Jesus" (of Nazareth) could be accounted as "an actual person", none of the follow-up inquires would be relevant at all.

Even "history" (within this context of time) is, at best, a "wild guess".

.

False.

Completely false.

There is quite the plausibility when everything is studied.



I will place it on you to come up with a replacement hypothesis that makes some kind of sense because so far, a few geniuses have tried and both are laughable. And calling them that is debatable but they are brilliant in their own right.

But they have failed miserably in explaining the information we are left with.

 

[oldbadger]

Mark, of which other gospels are based on does not read like history. Mark has a plot, characters are developed, there are scenes, scenes with Jesus alone with his thoughts, suspense, and a build up to a climax.

Hi, Steeltoes.....

Ok..... Mark does not read like history.....true. He was no historian.
Mark does not read like a senior general or great writer......... true.

Your examples show this. So.... suppose you saw a crime, wrote statement and finally went to Court to give evidence. If you are a layman that would be easy to defeat you. The cross examining lawyer (a Mr Steeltoes, by coincidence!) rises and tells the court. 1- You don't write like a proper police-officer. 2. It's just a perversion of the course of justice.
I don't think the jury would value that, too much.

The compilation of notes with orally carried record was lay, not pro.
The record is accurate, has amazing detail, and good chronology.

Outhouse and I may get going on the HJ or MJ thread as from this evening, me defending Mark, he battering it. Join us!

Think of it, you would be on outhouses side. That's amazing!:yes: