lpetrich

To Richard Carrier's comments on why Julius Caesar on his Rubicon crossing is much better attested than Jesus Christ's alleged resurrection, J.P. Holding has responded with Julie's River Run: On Comparing the Rubicon to the Resurrection.

My first thought was that J.P. Holding was trying to be disrespectful, and childishly so, by referring to Julius Caesar as "Julie", but his arguments were not much better -- mostly hair-splitting.

He distinguished between Julius Caesar and his army, when there was no good reason to do. JC traveled with his army, as most premodern military commanders did; they did not have present-day communications technology. So when JC's army crossed the Rubicon river, JC crossed with it.

He complained that JC had likely not personally written his books, but instead, dictated them. But even in that case, his books would still have been written under his command.

He also kvetched about how Richard Carrier cited only one enemy of Julius Caesar, namely Marcus Tullius Cicero; he moaned and groaned about not wanting to look through Cicero's writings. However, that Cicero disliked JC"s takeover is what's stated in various reference works, and I'm sure that it would be easy to verify that dislike by consulting his writings. Cicero did not like the idea of one-man rule, though after JC's Rubicon crossing, he was resigned to Rome being ruled either by JC or his main opponent Pompey.

As to enemies of Xtianity not recording Jesus Christ's resurrection, that is unlikely; they would have reported it and given it some insulting and sarcastic spin. Something like Jews were to do with Jesus Christ's virgin birth -- claim that that was a cover story for a Roman soldier making her pregnant.

J.P. Holding concludes with a claim that Xtianity could not have had the history it did if Jesus Christ had not been resurrected.

exile

The killer argument for me is that the people who had a grandstand seat at the events surrounding Jesus' death - the people of Jerusalem - ie the Jews - didn't believe a word of it.

MortalWombat

Surely by the same logic, he must believe that the history of Islam could not have occurred the way it dis unless the Archangel Gabriel really dictated the Qur'an to Muhammad.

Steven Carr

JP (No Link) Holding writes 'Because of the prevalence of orality over writing in ancient society, to transmit a fact orally was considered to be (and indeed, as well was) as good as writing it down. Jesus' own speech to his disciples is thus as good as Caesar's own hand ....'

What rubbish is this? Does Holding have a tape recording of the oral speech?

All he has is what is written down, and it is certainly not in the hand of Jesus.

Steven Carr

Holding continues to play at being an historian by trying to get around the way the Gospels never name their sources, and never show any sign of critical examination of their sources (the way a real historian would).

'Be that as it may, it would not occur to Carrier that the Gospels lack this because there was no dispute over source material which required this kind of comparative work -- in other words, it is absurd to demand that the Gospels do comparative work if their sources are uniform and reliable, as indeed would be first-hand testimony.'

Gosh , I thought even Luke 1 says he did not think his sources were uniform and reliable.

Paul complains about the false stories about Jesus.

So early Christian sources about Jesus were neither uniform nor reliable.

Steven Carr

Even Jesus's family, who watched his literally Christ-like behaviour for 30 years, didn't think much of him. Amazing that they could see the only Jew who never made a sin offering in his entire life, and never ask themselves why.

The magi travelled a long way to see the promised King, saw Jesus, and then never seemed to go back to see how this King was getting on (if they did Jesus's family might have got a clue about how important he was).

I guess they weren't impressed either.

Doesn't John 6:66 say that some of his own disciples left him?

Jesus really wasn't very impressive was he?

Vivisector

When you look at it this way, it's easier to see what's one of the recurring themes in Mark. Jesus did all these miracles, said all of these things, etc., and yet, his disciples just didn't get it. Why? They were STUPID!

Cheers,

V.

Diogenes the Cynic

It seems to me like the two alleged events are separated by a level of base plausibility before any evidence is even considered. Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon is at least not prima facie impossible as the physical resuscitation of a dead body would be.

The quality and quantity of evidence for the Rubicon event in addition to the fact that such an event is not impossible on its face, automatically makes the liklihood of historicity far greater than the resurrection story. Physical impossibility is a pretty big hurdle to overcome for establishing historicity and it's a hurdle that the Rubicon event has the advantage of not having to leap.

andrewcriddle

Lack of a description and criticism of sources is a general problem with ancient (and medieval) historians it is not confined to the Gospels.

Andrew Criddle

exile

Sure it is. And ancient historians describe incredible things like the Greek Gods intervening in the Trojan War and miracles being performed by Roman emperors. Christians will not accept these events as happening as described.
And yet they accept the incredible events described in the Gospels.

Ancient historians are often biased and give credence to stories which
if they appeared in a modern newspaper we would dismiss out of hand
as black propaganda - eg the stories of Tiberius' behaviour on Capri.
And yet we are asked to accept that the writers of the Gospels were not biased towards a particular interpretation of events, and towards acceptance of stories that support their view and a rejection of stories that do not.

Where different historians describe the life of, say, Caesar or Caligula, we note that some events appear in all histories. Others appear in only one version: other events appear in a different form in different histories.
From this we deduce that for some events all the primary sources on which the histories were based agree: for some there are a number of different accounts from which the historian chose whichever he thought most likely or suited his own political bias: and for others the historian may have very little basis at all - a rumour, gossip, or legend.

However - we are not allowed to look at the Bible like this. If Mark says 3 people were present at an event and John says 4 - these are not held to be incompatible. We are to accept the ludicrous story of the multitude of saints rising from their graves at the time of the crucifixion even with no support from the other Gospels.