J-D

If it is correct to say that the statement 'Spiderman was in New York on the day the Skrulls invaded' is neither an accurate report nor an inaccurate report, then it follows, by inescapable logical necessity, that it is correct to say that it is not an accurate report. If it is correct to say that the statement is not in the category of reports, then it follows by inescapable logical necessity that it is correct to say that it is not in the category of accurate reports. If it is correct to say that the statement is not an accurate or inaccurate report of something that actually happened, then it follows by inescapable logical necessity that it is correct to say that it is not an accurate report of something that actually happened.You can't look at the world and verify it. You can look at the world and falsify it. That doesn't mean it's not meaningful.

But even if it were not meaningful, it would still be correct to say that it is not an accurate report of events that actually occurred. Obviously a meaningless statement is not an accurate report of events which actually occurred.I don't understand what you mean in this context by the expressions 'fictionally meaningful', 'historically meaningful', 'historically right', or 'historically wrong'.I don't see that the one follows from the other.If it is a fictional report of a fictional happening, then it seems to me that it is correct to say that it is not an accurate report of events which actually occurred.I agree. I never said it was equivalent.Again, I agree. I never said that not being historically accurate is equivalent to being fictional.

However, being fictional is (at least sometimes) one of the ways of not being historically accurate.I don't what you mean in this context by 'not-historical' (as opposed to 'not historical'). Again, being fictional (at least sometimes) is one of the ways of not being historical.There is no logical 'must' about it. Perhaps you prefer to begin by considering the question 'is this history or fantasy?', but your methodological preferences, whether well-founded or not, do not change the logical status of any statement or question. Even if you are right not to begin, as a methodological practice, with the question 'Is it an accurate report of events which actually occurred?', that does not, logically, make the question meaningless.

In fact, it looks to me a lot as if you are focussing on methodological issues. Methodology is important, but it shouldn't be confused with logic. Methodological priority is not the same thing as logical priority.

gurugeorge

You're saying "not-x and not-y, therefore not-y".

I'm saying "not- (x or y) but z".

i.e., it's fiction, and we know it's fiction, therefore it's nonsense to say that it is an accurate report of anything (real), but it's also nonsense to say that it's not an accurate report of anything (real). How can fiction be not-accurate about the real world? It's not even ABOUT the real world in the first place.

The statement is meaningful only as part of a fiction. It is not a meaningful statement about the real world, therefore it can be neither accurate nor inaccurate in reference to the real world (it could be accurate or inaccurate only as a report about the story in the comic book).

What makes it that way is not choice of methodology but the way the world is.

The world is either this way:
"Jesus" is a fictional being with a human-sounding component (albeit likely a believed-in fiction, a fantasy superbeing).

Or it's this way:
"Jesus " is a man whose story got larded over with fantasy.

Only if the world is the latter way, does your sentence ("Each of the four gospels makes some statements about Jesus which cannot possibly be historically true and some statements about Jesus which might or might not be historically true") make sense.

If the world is the former way, the sentence ("Each of the four gospels makes some statements about Jesus which cannot possibly be historically true and some statements about Jesus which might or might not be historically true") is nonsense.

Therefore, you must have already decided the world is the latter way (or perhaps granting that it's that way for the sake of an "if-then" argument).

J-D

If I'm saying that (and it depends on which "x" and which "y" you have in mind), then that's a valid logical inference. Contrariwise, to affirm both 'not-x and not-y' and 'not not-y' is logically inconsistent.No, it isn't. There is nothing nonsensical about saying that a fictional text is not an accurate report of anything real. For example, Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None is a fictional text and is not an accurate report of anything real.If a text is not about the real world, then a fortiori it is not an accurate report of events in the real world.If it is correct to say that a statement is neither an accurate report of events in the real world nor an inaccurate report of events in the real world, then it follows by inescapable logical necessity that it is correct to say that it is not an accurate report of events in the real world.

Sometimes I get the impression that you think the affirmation 'this is not an accurate report of events in the real world' is equivalent to the affirmation 'this is an inaccurate report of events in the real world'. But you are not consistent about this. You effectively deny it every time you insist that some statement is neither of those things. Those implicit denials are correct. It is not the case that everything is either an accurate report of events in the real world or an inaccurate report of events in the real world; therefore, 'this is not an accurate report of events in the real world' is not equivalent to 'this is an inaccurate report of events in the real world'.

In technical logical terms, the point about which you are confused is the scope of negation.Without more particularisation of what you mean by those two statements, you have not yet established either that those two possibilities are exclusive or that they are exhaustive. At this stage I'm not sure what you mean by either of them.The statement makes sense regardless of any uncertainty about the meaning of 'Jesus' so long as we're clear about the meaning of 'statements about Jesus'. There are statements in each of the four gospels in which the name 'Jesus' is used. For each of those statements, by simple logic, it is correct to say 'either it is an accurate report of events that actually occurred or it is not an accurate report of events that actually occurred'. There is more than one way that something can not be an accurate report of events that actually occurred. If it should happen to be the case, for one of those statements, that the name 'Jesus', as used in the statements, has no meaning, that would be one of the several ways in which it might turn out that the statement is not an accurate report of events that actually occurred.The sentence might be false, for any of a number of reasons, but it is not nonsense.As I indicated above, I am not sufficiently clear on what you mean by either of your descriptions of two ways you think the world might be to have a view on either of them.

aa5874

Your argument is completely FLAWED since the right "world for Jesus" is now being debated.

There are at least TWO "real worlds" for Jesus.

1. The world of Myth.

2. The world of Belief.

J-D

That depends on what you mean, in this context, by the terms 'world for Jesus', 'real world', 'world of myth' and 'world of belief'.

gurugeorge

No, but it is the case that a REPORT ABOUT SOMETHING (in this case "Jesus") is either an accurate report or an not an accurate report about that thing. Something that purports to be a report about something is either accurate or not accurate regarding that something..

A fictional text is not a not-accurate report because it fails to be accurate, it's a not-accurate report because it fails to be a report.


They don't have to be exclusive or exhaustive, but they're the two most probable options based on my understanding of the state of scholarship on the matter. I don't believe for example in Mountainman's type of "late invention" theory, or Atwill's "total Roman con job" theory. I think there are other options, but I've only glanced at them. To me, the evidence seems to be most consistent either with a pure myth that happens to have human-sounding aspect, that was sincerely believed in, or with the story of a human being that accrued a dense layering of mythological elements.

So either the referent of "Jesus" is like "Spiderman" (fictional on the basis of nothing real, albeit, unlike Spiderman, sincerely believed-in), or the referent of Jesus is like anything from "Popeye" (very vaguely based on somebody real) to something a bit like "Sabbatai Zevi" (in large part based on something real).

In actual fact, I think the referent of "Jesus" is fictional like the normal Jewish concept of the "Messiah", only conceived of as having already been in the past, rather than to come in the future - i.e. a fictional mythical divine god-man (or god-king) hero, at least one of whose central tropes has been inverted.

Of any statement in general, it is logically true that either it's an accurate report or not an accurate report about the real world, and it's true that there are many ways of not being an accurate report about the real world (one of which is "by being fictional").

But you didn't start off with statements in general, but statements ABOUT JESUS. Specifically about Jesus. You originally said (paraphrasing) "either it's an accurate report ABOUT JESUS or it's not an accurate report ABOUT JESUS". But if the statement is ABOUT JESUS then the nature of that "Jesus" changes the nature of the statement - because if that Jesus is part of the real world, then your logic holds, whereas if he's not part of the real world, then your logic doesn't hold (you're already on the "not accurate report about the real world" side of the equation)

It's the "aboutness" that makes all the difference, as I've said from the beginning - the intentionality of the statements.

A statement about Jesus that is not an accurate report must be not an accurate report about Jesus - i.e. it pertains specifically to Jesus, and presupposes that he's amenable to accurate or not accurate reports, i.e. presupposes that he's a real person.

aa5874

Again, you are wrong.

People can KNOWINGLY make false statements about characters that they KNOW or accept do NOT exist at the very time the statement was uttered for the purpose of DECEPTION.

J-D

Since you are making an issue of 'aboutness', which seems to have some meaning to you which is not entirely clear to me, I restate my position without touching on 'aboutness'.

1. There are statements in the four canonical Gospels in which the word 'Jesus' is used. (Note that for this purpose I am taking no position on whether those statements are 'about' Jesus, or indeed whether they are 'about' anything, whatever 'about' may mean.)

2. Some of those statements cannot possibly be literally accurate reports of events that actually took place in the real world. (Note that for this purpose I am taking no position on what they are, only on what they cannot be.)

3. Others of those statements are such that they might or might not be literally accurate reports of events that actually took place in the real world. (Note that for this purpose I am taking no position on what they are, only indicating possible answers to a still-open question.)

Out of 1, 2, and 3, which do you disagree with, and why? It can't be because of any issue of 'aboutness', since none of those three statements depends on 'aboutness'.

archibald

Potentially false dichotomy:

mountainman

The word 'Jesus' does not appear in the earliest bibles.
All that appears is a greek version of the abbreviation 'J_S'
where the underscore represents an over-bar.

This is another reason a MJ is the more likely explanation, because Jesus was a Code Name and one not out in the open. What is even more suspicious is that the authors of the new testament claimed to have preserved this code name "J_S" from the hero of the LXX called 'Joshua'. This is the stuff of encrypted legends not real people.