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Originally Posted by No Robots
I would be happy to participate in a thread on the subject.
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I'd as soon let the mods decide whether we need yet another thread on Jesus' historicity.
I'd need to write a whole book to say everything I could say about Brunner's article. Here are some comments just off the top of my head.
From the first paragraph:
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In the face of opposition from the entire clerical establishment of religion, metaphysics and moralism, I have always aimed straight for the truth in lifting the superstitious overlay from the image of Christ.
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Not good. In my eyes, anyone who claims to be fighting the establishment when he's defending an orthodoxy loses lots of credibility right from the get-go.
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We are speaking here of the ontological proof of Christ; his existence as a thing, this human-thingly reality in history, actually does follow from the concept of him which everyone, even the "insipiens,"e4 has. We have the concept of Christ, of his character and activity, of the continuing influence of his character and being. Unlike the ontological proof of God in heaven, it is not the idea of perfection which leads directly to the idea of his existence: in the case of Christ it is the actuality of his perfection which obliges us to accept his existence. Thus we are logically constrained to see his concrete, individual, human existence as the cause of the concrete effects we experience, as that which fulfils the conditions for contingency.
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Trying to cut through the metaphysical bafflegab as best I can, this seems to be a convoluted version of the Argument from Changed Lives. It is not a sound argument.
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We must either deny his influence or go on to assert his existence
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Christian beliefs certainly have had influence. That does not confirm anything Christians believe about the origins of their beliefs.
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For the grinning leer of "criticism" is proposing no less a madness than this: that the genius which is denied to Christ, this manifest genius in its incomparable, glorious wholeness, should be attributed to the assembly of fishermen, tax-collectors, sinners and harlots who have handed this picture down to us.
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I do not recall seeing any scholarly critic make that proposal.
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And apropos of the hypothesis that religious syncretism was current at the time of Christ even among Jews, I attach no great importance to it;
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Nevertheless, the evidence for that hypothesis seems irrefutable.
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it could only be made by someone with a frightening ignorance of the context of contemporary life and thought as reflected in the talmudic literature.
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I am aware of no reason to expect the talmudic writers to have taken note of any syncrestic trends.
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And I put no weight whatsoever on the considerable bundle of hypotheses which attributes to these Jewish fishermen, tax-collectors, sinners and harlots the most detailed knowledge of the cults of Mithras, Adonis, Tammuz, Attis and Osiris, the nature myths and divinity myths of the entire world, including those of Buddhism; as well as Alexandrine philosophical speculation (which in part developed only subsequently).
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Since no real scholar suggests that Christianity was created by a bunch of "Jewish fishermen, tax-collectors, sinners and harlots," this is a totally irrelevant observation.
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Having quoted this passage, Arthur Drews flares up in triumph from among the comfortable coals of his wonted tedium: "In the face of this, what has become of Jesus' 'uniqueness'?" Evidently he implies that those who wrote the Christ-myths were acquainted with this hymn in praise of Buddha.
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I think I've heard the name before, but I am otherwise totally unacquainted with the works of Arthur Drew. If it was his opinion that Christianity began as warmed-over Buddhism, then I think he was grievously mistaken. However, I'm afraid that Brunner, although he has barely begun the essay at this point, has already demonstrated that he is not to be trusted to accurately represent the views of people who disagree with him.
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How could the united efforts of these superstitious, stupid and illiterate people have brought into being such a highly-wrought literary work of art representing an undeniably unique and original genius?
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If Brunner is referring to the New Testament writings, I wholeheartedly agree that they could not have been produced by stupid and illiterate people. I don't see a problem with their having been produced by superstitious people, but then I think all religions are just so many superstitions.
In saying that the writings represent a "unique and original genius," Brunner assumes his conclusion.
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Are we to suppose that Jewish novelists of this kind were able to work together and produce the primal phenomenon of such a Genius, putting into his mouth words which are Spirit-filled at every point . . . .
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If Brunner had offered from proof that the words were indeed spirit-filled, I might have given this argument some closer attention.
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And why, contrary to their intention of fabricating a coherent story, did they make the figure of Christ so suspiciously ambiguous with regard to his divine Sonship, his Messiahship and his Davidic pedigree, even going so far as to make him actually deny the latter (Mt. 22:41ff.)?
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People who think the Bible is God's word may assume that its writers intended to be coherent. I don't.
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Adultery, the adultery of this adulteress, was to be spared punishment: no one but Christ could conceive of such a thing!
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Poppycock.
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the Jews were expecting a triumphant Messiah, the very opposite of a suffering Messiah.
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That does seem to have been the majority viewpoint. I am aware of no facts implying that there were no others.
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The story of Christ is as remarkable as it is true.
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It would be remarkable if it were true, but Brunner has been attempting to argue that it must be true because it is remarkable.
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But the most remarkable, the truest thing, as we have already observed, is the unprecedentedly vivid characterization of the man Christ, which is beyond explanation, however much erudition is adduced to show his similarity to other miracle-workers, other saviour-figures.
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That looks like an Argument from Personal Incredulity to me. He can't believe it, therefore it cannot be true. A fictional Christ looks well within easy explanation to me. Not that what I'm capable of believing proves anything, but I'm not offering my personal perspective as evidence for anything, either.
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Compare the Apollonius of Tyana portrayed by Philostratos as a deliberate foil to Christ, on the basis of traditional material, with the Christ of the Gospels. The difference between miserable poetic invention and sublime truth will be apparent
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Well, of course it is apparent . . . to anyone whose mind is made up that the gospels are sublimely true.
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Everything that goes on around Christ bears the mark of authentic life
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It doesn't look the least bit authentic to me. Excepting maybe the Three Stooges, Jesus' disciples are the most uncredible characters I've ever come across.
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I believe in Christ as the perfect mystical Genius, for he is too exalted, too significant a man to be either a charlatan or a fool
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We're supposed to be discussing his existence, not his state of mind.
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As we know, apart from the New Testament itself, literary testimony is slight and uncertain, and we also know why . . . . The greater the genius, the less effect he will have directly on his age, the less attention he will attract from those who would be in a position to record interesting details about his life.
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I cannot avoid the suspicion that Brunner is thinking more about himself here than about Jesus. Anyway, history provides more than enough counterexamples to falsify this hypothesis.
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Quite apart from this, we cannot be sure when the [Talmudic] passages which definitely refer to Jesus Christ originated. Some of them can be shown to originate in the 4th century. Thus the Talmud does not yield a single proof of the real historical existence of Christ . . . . It is striking how seldom Christianity is referred to in the literature of the Talmud and Midrash, even its later parts. Even indirect references are relatively few . . . . But precisely because Christianity does not receive due attention in the Talmud, all the more weight attaches to these references to Christ.
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Lessee here. The Talmud contains no proof of Jesus' existence. Therefore, it is especially good evidence for Jesus' existence?
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these slanders show that Jewish recollection of the real Christ was still alive, at least as regards three facts:
1. His birth out of wedlock.
2. His opposition to the rabbis.
3. His crucifixion.
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Considering that these Talmudic references were written long after the gospels were produced, all they show is that Jews of that time were familiar with the gospels and were under the impression that they were to some extent based on historical fact.
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As far as the crucifixion of Christ is concerned, we have already quoted the relevant passages (287ff. above). The time given, "the eve of Pesach," is an important detail and agrees with the Gospel account.
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Would it be terribly outlandish to suppose that it agrees with the gospel account because Jewish belief about the crucifixion was based on the gospel account?
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Even more worthy of belief than independent tradition are the stories of Christ's shameless opposition of the rabbis
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Jewish tradition about Jesus might have become independent of Christian tradition by the time this portion of the Talmud was written. That does not imply an origin of Jewish tradition independent of Christian tradition.
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Thus the Mishna and Gemara speak of Christ's illegitimate birth, of his relationship and his opposition to the rabbis and to rabbinic teaching, and of his crucifixion. We must grant them a certain credibility, not dependent on the portrayal found in the Gospels, in so far as the moral criticism which was applied to Christ in his time is still alive in the tradition.
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If they were not dependent on the gospels, they were dependent on other Christian writings.
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No less weight (indeed, far more) attaches to the testimonies of Suetonius and Tacitus, which can hardly be dismissed as interpolated falsifications, as the critics would suggest.
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The evidence for interpolation is certainly not compelling, but it's hardly an absurd notion. More to the point, assuming their authenticity, they don't prove the existence of anybody except Christians who believed that their religion was founded by somebody known as the Christ.
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The passage in Suetonius displays an ignorance of the circumstances which would be impossible where Christians were concerned
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Here Brunner is supposing again that skeptics have to assume that the first Christians were a bunch of idiots. It might well have occurred to a forger that if you're pretending to be a non-Christian, it would be a good idea to feign some ignorance about Christianity.
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that in Tacitus manifests decided enmity and scorn towards them.
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That would have been the sensible thing for anyone pretending to be Tacitus to do.
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The Christians at that time were not in the habit of falsifying things so subtly; their falsifications were crude affairs
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Yeah, that is true of the ones we know about for sure, like Josephus's Testimonium. That is why we know about them. But why assume that Christian forgers were always so clumsy? Do we have any reason at all to suppose that we have caught every forgery that any Christian ever committed?
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Moreover, Christians then would not have been greatly interested in merely providing evidence that Christ really existed
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We don't need to assume that that was their motive. A more likely motive would have been to provide evidence that the non-Christian world was aware of Christ as soon as awareness would have been likely.
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These accounts do not have the 'feel' of forgeries
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Forgeries never do have that feel if they're done well.
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Paul's Christ is almost nothing in comparison with the Christ of the Gospels.
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That is not surprising if Paul had never heard of the Christ of the gospels.
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Without the latter, Paul's Christ would have attained no significance in the world.
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This assumes what is to be proved.
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Thus is manifested the utter frivolity and total irrelevance of such men as our Samuel and Arthur, these trivial pedants, incompetent in the face of something great: all they notice are inconsequential similarities, with their Sargon, Romulus, Perseus, etc., which are of no concern to us; they fail to see the difference, the essential matter which is so crucial to us.
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There is nowhere nearly enough space here for a proper rebuttal to this. Suffice it to say that the differences between Christian myths about Jesus and earlier myths seem always to be strictly proportional to the strength of the believer's attachment to the Christian versions.
03-29-2006, 11:31 AM
