Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Steven Carr · 06-04-2008, 10:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Mara bar Serapion, letter:

Or [what benefit did] the Jews [recieve] by the murder of their wise king, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away from them? .... The Jews, brought to desolation and expelled from their kingdom, are driven away into every land. .... Nor yet [did] the wise king [truly die], because of the new laws which he enacted.

So the non-legendary historical sources report that Jesus was made the king of the Jews, displacing Herod?

And that Jesus was killed in 69 AD, the 'very time their kingdom was driven away from them'.

And this is not a legend, because legends do not grow up so fast.

Ben C Smith · 06-04-2008, 11:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

According to Paul, the only thing he preached was Christ crucified.

So any other Jesus that was preached, was not Christ crucified.

That is fallacious logic, and I think you know it.

Paul can preach nothing but a crucified Christ, and someone else can preach a different crucified Christ.

You might as well argue that Paul preached a male Christ, so any other Jesus that was preached was not male.

Quote:

So the non-legendary historical sources report that Jesus was made the king of the Jews, displacing Herod?

No.

Quote:

And that Jesus was killed in 69 AD, the 'very time their kingdom was driven away from them'.

From that very time their kingdom was taken away from them. From.

But, if you wish to discard Mara bar Serapion because you do not see metaphor in it, at least deal with Josephus, Tacitus, and Lucian. (This list could be expanded to include Celsus and several anonymous opponents of Christianity whose views are countered in Christian texts.)

Quote:

And this is not a legend, because legends do not grow up so fast.

I think legends can grow up practically overnight. I think Sherwin-White is mistaken.

Ben.

Steven Carr · 06-04-2008, 11:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

From that very time their kingdom was taken away from them. From.

'From that very time'

Which means 'from a very different time' :-)

Ben C Smith · 06-04-2008, 11:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

From that very time their kingdom was taken away from them. From.

'From that very time'

Which means 'from a very different time' :-)

No; it means a process.

Ben.

spamandham · 06-04-2008, 11:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KrisK10

This brings me to a “challenge” that is sometimes brought up by traditional scholars: “Julius Müller challenged scholars of the mid-nineteenth century to show anywhere in history where within thirty years a great series of legends had accumulated around a historical individual and had become firmly fixed in general belief. Müller's challenge has never been met.” (see http://www.apologetics.com/default.j...urrection.html )

First, let's dissect the implied assumptions here;

1. Jesus was historical.
2. The Gospels accurately portray when he lived.
3. The traditional datings of the Gospels are accurate.
4. The NT is legendary in nature.
5. Stories about Jesus were wide spread within 30 years of his death.

Next, let's see what lies behind those assumptions:

1. Nothing credible.
2. Nothing outside the gospels.
3. Not much.
4. Nothing.
5. Nothing.

Considering there is virtually nothing behind his assumptions, it's no wonder no-one has lived up to the challenge!

That said, consider the following:
1. Star Wars is a known work of fiction. There exists a religion based off of it known as the Jedi Order.
2. Dianetics is a known work of fiction. There exists a religion based off of it known as Scientology.
3. The genre of Mark (generally argued to be the earliest gospel story) is contested among scholars.

Steven Carr · 06-05-2008, 02:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

'From that very time'

Which means 'from a very different time' :-)

No; it means a process.

Ben.

A process which started at a very different time.

Malachi151 · 06-05-2008, 05:13 AM

These arguments, I think, point in favor of the Jesus Myth argument. Sherwin-White's argument are geared toward arguing against "mythologized history", i.e. as you say, towards refuting the ideas of groups like the Jesus Seminar who are proposing that there was a historical core, but that core was overtaken by mythology to the loss of historical fact.

What Jesus Myth arguments state is that there was NEVER ANY HISTORICAL CORE, thus, the reason that there is no conflict between real history and mythology is that there is no real history to conflict with the mythology.

In other words, if the "life of Jesus" were completely originated with the Gospel of Mark, as I suspect, and it is totally and 100% fictional, then there is no real history of Jesus to be lost, there is JUST the "mythology" with nothing to contradict it.

But now there is another problem for Sherwin-White's argument though. The other problem is that there was a massive and organized effort to "scrub" the Jesus story by the official church. This was never the case with other figures. So, that there could be differences in how information about Jesus was passed down vs. how information about other figures was passed down is to be expected because in no other case was there such an organized and large effort to frame the story and to create such "official" and "blasphemous" accounts.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KrisK10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

I don't know of any real historian who takes Sherwin-White's "convention of historical inquiry" at all seriously, so I am not sure what you want to understand.

Toto & Malachai

Thanks for comments. I got to say though that the archive of discussion on this topic is pretty poor. Almost nobody had actaully read the 8 pertinent pages from Sherwin-White's book. His focus was not really on legendary growth rate, but on historical erasure rate (bad title for the thread on my part). In other words, even in those cases where there was rapid legend like with Elvis, JFK, etc, lots of hisotircal core still survived. What folks from Strauss to the Jesus Seminar have proposed is that there is massive legend in the gospels and that almost no hisotrical core has survived. S-W, who appears to me to have been a respected classical historian. is simply saying that this would be a first for him in his study of ancient literature. As I said in my first post, P.A. Brunt challenged him with what I presume was his best example (the Alexander the Great literature) and S-W just rightly pointed out that the historical core survived in other sources. So S-W's view that the historical core is usually pressent in the first 2 or 3 generations literary record (a generation is 30-35 years, so this would apply to NT writings into the second century which includes a post 70 dating of Mark) seems pretty sound. I'll bet you can't find a classical historian that says much against it. My point was that no matter how you cut it, the Christian literaure seems to be an exception to the amount of historical core that is usually found in ancient sources. From there, I'm merely proposing that there is a good explanation for the Christian literature being an exception -- Jesus was not historically significant in the century after his death to anyone except those who thought he resurrected, therefore, nobody but them would write about him. This explains why we don't have less legendary records of Jesus as we do for Alexander the Great (who was historically significant in his lifetime and immediately after). This conclusion merely matches what you said about the current skeptical scholarship position -- nothing was written about Jesus by those who just saw him as an unfortunate victim of Roman justice. Perhaps we are just going in circles here, but I think it is the wrong tack to take to say that S-W's convention of historical inquiry is incorrect or not taken seriously by historians today. More accurate I think is that Christian literature is an exception to S-W's rule for a good reason. I was just testing the waters to see if anyone else saw it that way.

Still would like to hear someone agree with me that the Alexander the Great literaure answers Muller's challenge at the end of my first post. And if anyone does agree with me on this, why has traditional scholarship been able to toot their horn with this challenge since at least 1981 without anyone answering it?

Kris

Ben C Smith · 06-05-2008, 05:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

A process which started at a very different time.

A process has to start at a different time than it culminates. Otherwise it is not a process; it is an event.

Ben.

Solo · 06-05-2008, 06:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

According to Paul, the only thing he preached was Christ crucified.

So any other Jesus that was preached, was not Christ crucified.

That is fallacious logic, and I think you know it.

Paul can preach nothing but a crucified Christ, and someone else can preach a different crucified Christ.

.....and there are other possibilities, as well. The "other Jesus" could have been:

a) another person named Jesus,

b) same person who, claimed Paul's competitors, either
was not crucified, or whose crucifixion was deliberately
played down by them,

c) same person but one reputed to have preached things at
variance with Paul's revelations and/or his theology,

d) combination of b) and c)

Jiri

aa5874 · 06-05-2008, 07:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

So where are are the *other* sources where the historical core about Jesus survived?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Josephus, Antiquities 20.9.1:

So he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others.

There is no historical core of Jesus of the NT in Antiquities20.9.1.

The word "Christ" in AJ20.9.1 is linked to the "Christ" in AJ 18.3.3 which is considered to be an interpolation.

And further the word "Christ" is found only twice in Antiquities at 18.3.3 and 20.9.1, and the only specific event of "Christ" is his resurrection.

These passages re-inforce the myth core of Jesus the Christ.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Tacitus, Annals 15.44:

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

There is no historical core to Jesus in Annals 15.44. The word "Jesus" is not in even Tacitus Annals. One cannot just assume that Christus must refer to Jesus Christ of the NT.

And further, the followers of Jesus of the NT were NOT called Christians during the days of Pontius Pilate when the so-called Jesus was alive.

While Jesus was alive, based on the NT, Jesus did not publicly call himself Christ, nor did his disciples, and there was no Christian movement at that time with respect to followers of Jesus.

Based on the NT, the disciples of Jesus were first called Christians in Antioch, many years after Pontius Pilate. And Jesus was called Jeremiah, Elijah or one of the prophets, NOT Christus.

Annals 15.44 augments ambiguity not historicity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Lucian, Passing of Peregrinus 11:

They regarded [Peregrinus] as a god and made use of him as a lawgiver and wrote him down as a protector, next after that other, to be sure, whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he brought this new cult to life.

There is no historical core to Jesus in this passage by Lucian.

According to the NT, Jesus was NOT crucified because he brought a new cult to life. The new cult started after the death of Jesus, and after Jesus was resurrected and ascended to heaven and the disciples became filled with the Holy Ghost.

Based on the NT, Jesus was crucified for blasphemy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Mara bar Serapion, letter:

Or [what benefit did] the Jews [recieve] by the murder of their wise king, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away from them? .... The Jews, brought to desolation and expelled from their kingdom, are driven away into every land. .... Nor yet [did] the wise king [truly die], because of the new laws which he enacted.

Again, this letter from Mara bar Separion does not have an historical core for Jesus.

It is not known when the letter was written, the words "Jesus" or "Christ" are not in the letter . In addition all the information about the "wise king" could have been lifted from some apologetic source.

You presented extremely weak sources for an historical core. If this is all to the historical core of Jesus, it is really pathetic.

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