ApostateAbe

Josephus was a Jew who was writing from the perspective of a Jew. Tacitus was a Roman pagan. Maybe Tacitus really did come to the wrong conclusion, but his point of view would be well-informed by living in a culture that is only a few decades removed from the time of Jesus. Like I said, this isn't slam dunk evidence, but it counts at least for something. What if Tacitus had written, "Jesus was supposedly crucified by Pontius Pilate, though this is probably just a Christian lie..." Do you suppose that mythicists would strongly promote such a writing as evidence in their favor? You bet your ass, as well they should.

blastula

They're not fact checkers. They're basically rumor mongers. They passed on whatever stories were being told. They don't divulge their sources much or give uncertainties. They simply give you a good idea of what people were saying at the time, for whatever it's worth.

They would matter to a point. They matter much less than contemporaneous independent accounts.

Abe, you seem uncomfortable with the idea of not having conclusive knowledge of events that actually happened. The reality is that there are zillions of actual persons and events in history that we simply don't have the evidence to know about or confirm happened.

ApostateAbe

Yes, you are right. I do have a strong bias toward conclusions. When I observe people who make a point about being uncertain about the existence of God, for example, I am inclined to think their positions are really a compromise between reason and delusion, and there would be only a conclusive no-brainer position if it were really all about observation-and-probability-based reason. Since much of my background is in defending the theory of evolution, I am very much bent against the idea that uncertainty is a legitimate position. Creationists have tended to encourage the position of uncertainty, probably because they see it as a better selling point--"teach both sides." Plus, the creationists really are uncertain--they are torn heavily between their religious faith on the one hand and the worldly evidence and scientific authorities on the other hand. That is a big reason that I often draw insulting analogies between creationists and Jesus-skeptics. I do think that Jesus-skeptics have better reasons for their uncertainties, but it really irritates me when Jesus-skeptics treat bizarre unevidenced improbable explanations for the historical evidence as competitive hypotheses, such as when they claim that "the Lord's brother" may have been really just an obscure religious rank, or when they claim that crucifixion could have happened in some mythical spiritual realm of heaven, or when they claim that all four of the gospels could have been simply derivatives of Mark, or when they claim Eusebius may have forged everything that Josephus said about Jesus.

Anyway, it is my biased opinion that we have abundant relevant evidence for Jesus, and our goal should be to make the best sense of that evidence, even if we find it is all falsehood, without the slightest bit of history. I think a position of uncertainty would be appropriate for times when relevant evidence is genuinely lacking. In this subject, we really do have a lot of evidence, and it matters whether or not the early Christians were liars inasmuch as we can use the evidence to analyze the ways in which they lied, not that we should either trust them or distrust them--that would be a very shallow method of analysis, which of course Jesus-skeptics tend to prefer, because of a fundamentally wrong idea about the way historical analyses are done.

blastula

There is no comparison between the evidence for evolution and evidence for Jesus. Your comparison is ludicrous.

I'm not calling anyone a liar. Tacitus needn't be a liar to pass on what someone else said without knowing whether it's true and acknowledging so, just careless.

Oh brother. Enough with the strawmen. It's not about black and white true or false, it's about uncertainties and acknowledging them. It's bad historical practice to say "Tacitus verifies Jesus existed, period."

blastula

A better comparison to evolution would be the evidence that Christians existed and originated in the first century or later.

A comparison to evidence for Jesus's existence would be evidence for a claim that a specific species existed based on old anonymous texts found in somebody's cellar that have descriptions of a certain fossil with strange biological details but without the actual fossil and where neighbors had heard stories passed on from their older relatives of somebody talking about this fossil.

ApostateAbe

There is a comparison, I figure, but, like with any comparison, it is limited. I am not saying that Jesus-mythicists are just as unreasonable as creationists. I am saying that the methods of argumentation of those two groups tends to converge on the same patterns--strong encouragement of uncertainty, promotion of improbable hypotheses as being equally competitive, strong contempt for the intellectual secular authorities, and a general lack of concern for probabilities.

I will give you an example. Ken Ham has repeatedly encouraged creationist audiences to respond, whenever an evolutionist makes a claim of history, by saying, "Were you there?" If nobody was there, then it is strong reason to doubt. The byline of Jesus-skeptics is of course more reasonable, but it is in the same ball park: "Where is the contemporaneous attestation?" And, of course, since their opponents are empty-handed in that narrow respect, many of them take it as good reason to disregard any conclusion about the historical Jesus.
Wonderful. I wasn't claiming nor was I thinking that you called Tacitus a liar. And such a point would be irrelevant, anyway. Regardless of whether Tacitus was a truthteller or a liar, we must still make the best sense of the evidence. Even the potentially blithe lack of knowledge about Jesus would be significant, maybe even more significant than sourcing directly from the Christians--he would simply be repeating what was commonly believed among people in his own society, the Roman pagans. Like I said, if he claimed that the crucifixion was probably just a lie, then mythicists and Jesus-skeptics would count it as damned good evidence, and I would have to acknowledge that it really would be at least somewhat good. The sword cuts both ways, and in this case it cuts in favor of the historicists. Not a slam dunk case by itself, but at least a small contributing quantity of probability to the cumulative case all of the same.
Yes, yes, absolutely, I agree.

Toto

This is just too much. How can uncertainty not be a legitimate position when there is no reliable evidence? Do you recognize your position in this scheme?

The creationist debate has poisoned your mind. But if you must use a creationist analogy, remember that creationists often argue that if scientists haven't proven how life originated, that the default position must be Goddidit. Scientists are content to say that we don't know how life originated on earth and wait for more evidence.

None of these are bizarre, and all of them have at least as much evidence as anything else in Biblical studies.

"The Brother of the Lord" is a Hebrew proper name. All four gospels show evidence of being derived at least in part from Mark. Kenneth Olson has written a PhD thesis demonstrating that the Testamonium shows every indication of being the work of Eusebius.

If all of the evidence we have for Jesus is falsehood with not the slightest bit of history, the best sense may be that there was no historical Jesus and later Christians made him up.

Watch the insults.

spin

The latter would be a little safer.

Good for you. Paul for one shows no knowledge of his involvement.

You may as well use Ben Hur or The Robe for historical content in the bogus Christ passage in Tacitus.

(I simply love the persistent refusal of anyone pretending to take a historical approach to actively analyze the veracity of Annals 15.44.)

We are not talking about the central narrative of christianity, but the central narrative of the gospels, that of a guy born in Bethlehem who grew up in Nazareth and then moved to Capernaum and wandered about Galilee after being baptized by John and collecting a bunch of followers, stirring up all sorts of people, giving the Pharisees the shits, and going off to Jerusalem where he gets killed, along the way off with the devil, healing various people by dubious means, feeding thousands with a workman's lunch and having a tete-a-tete with Moses and Elijah.

This is news for almost everyone on this forum. Perhaps you dreamt it, or posted on another forum.

Perhaps you didn't get my criticism of your misuse of best explanation.

How self-ironic.

Would you like to try again?

ApostateAbe

spin, when anyone breaks apart my paragraphs intended to make a few unified points into single isolated lines, and then responds to each of them with one-liners, you can understand how that makes for a frustrating experience for me. That is not the way I am going to do this. There is nothing stopping you from doing it regardless, and you can just go ahead and do so, but I am just giving you an FYI.

mountainman

Hi Toto, and Steve and Abe,

You must admit that the possibility of a hidden consiracy does arise naturally with this pattern of evidence, and that in the circumstances, the exploration and the investigation of the use and the extent of deliberate and pious forgery should not be prevented, or hindered or treated as a poor cousin to the mainstream plan of attack via "textual criticism" etc.



And there may be an abundance of claimed evidence for Jesus, but if this claimed evidence is registered and indexed and listed and then examined rigorously and in genuinely objective, none of the claimed items can stand up as unambiguous. At the end of the process, out of abundance of claims (which included centuries and centuriesof forgeries to the 21st century) we have a vacuum of unambiguous evidence.

The evidence for Jesus in such a vacuum is faith based.

Given the above, in my opinion, to walk away from a proper investigation of pious forgery in the 4th century is itself either blindness or madness or just criminal.


Abe you must put down this criterion of embarrassement. It does not serve today. It had its time in the sun of belief for 16 centuries, but it cannot be used now as it did. People are able to think around the edges of this criterion nowdays - it holds no water. Please let it go.

If there are any awkward facts about Jesus. it is the vacuum of evidence which stands at the head of the queue of such awkward facts, in my picture of the events.

Best wishes,


Pete