ApostateAbe

OK, maybe you would like to clarify or rephrase your statement about what you take to be an unjustified assumption, which is a commonality with creationism. It is plainly the reality that "the Bible must contain some truth (scientific or historical)," so what did you actually mean to tell me? I would separate the probable realities from the falsehoods by using a set of criteria such as ABE, but you would not accept such criteria, and I guess that is where the comparison to creationists shifts from me to you.

Doug Shaver

They obviously believe it was defeated. Whether they thought the defeat was easily accomplished is not so clear.

And the reason it is not clear is that we don't find out, from any historicist scholar, what arguments were actually brought to bear on the issue. Nor do we find out who brought them. So, mythicism was defeated, and that is something "everybody knows." But who defeated it, and how did they defeat it? Nobody seems to know that.

So say they all.

That assumes your conclusion.

But why do they believe that?

For the next excerpt, I'm going to change the pattern of emphases from what you added.

The only generally accepted belief that mythicism is inconsistent with is Jesus' historicity. Everything else that is generally held by secular scholars to be true about Christianity's origins, insofar as mythicism must deny it, is absolutely dependent on the assumption of Jesus' actual existence.

ApostateAbe

Well, it is an obscure topic within the academy--it is a historical topic of a historical subject, and it is no longer so relevant--but there are at least a few people who do know the topic. I recommend a book titled, Jesus Outside the New Testament (or via: amazon.co.uk), by Robert E. Van Voorst. Not to be convinced of historicism--I would actually look to the New Testament to find the primary evidence--but to get an idea of how mythicism really is covered in the academy. There is a section in the book that surveys the history of mythicism, going back hundreds of years even before Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews.
My conclusion that the gospels were intended as historical truth is assumed? Not really--it is inferred from the first passage of the gospel of Luke. The question should be whether or not some claims within the gospels are true, not what the intentions were. The intentions are plainly on the surface.
Why do the scholars believe that the James in Galatians 1:19 is the same James as the brother of Jesus in the gospels and Josephus? I don't exactly know, but I imagine it is because it is the most strikingly obvious explanation, and they don't give it much more thought. I think it is more useful to ask ourselves whether or not it is actually reasonable to accept that explanation, regardless of who may believe what for why. I wrote a long post laying out my complete argument, and you can view it here:

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....29#post6401829
Yes, the undeveloped belief that Jesus was myth is not directly inconsistent with any of the observations. We all believe that the Jesus of the New Testament is myth. It remains true, however, only when the debate begins. There seem to be many generally accepted beliefs within the academy that tend to be thrown under the bus by the mythicists and superskeptics as the debates progress, because otherwise the mythicists would lose the debates sooner. These beliefs include the dates of the gospels, the legitimacy of the criterion of dissimilarity (and all other criteria), the gospel of Q, the existence of Nazareth, the authorship of the Pauline epistles, and more. The mythicists sometimes have well-developed hypotheses to replace these beliefs that were established by the academy, but they seem often merely ad hoc propositions designed merely to make a theory consistent, not that the evidence is actually on their side. With the evidence on their side, maybe they really can build a model that can overthrow the historicist establishment. That is where the criterion of explanatory power becomes especially relevant. I wish them all the best of luck.

Atheos

I'm actually pretty seasoned at this. I don't post a lot in BC&H but I've lurked and occasionally posted there pretty much since I joined in '04. You'll possibly note that I'm also a moderator of that forum. While being a moderator has no bearing on my credentials it's an indication that I'm not exactly a stranger to the forum.

Abe, I appreciate your response. It was thorough and well presented. However you seem to have missed the point of my query. I wasn't asking for a justification of the thought process by which you reached the opinion you hold. Instead I was curious as to what parts of the NT canon you felt were "corroborated". Apart from references to known cities and historical personalities there's little else. That was my point.

Secondly, you treat the NT as if it is the only religious text ever to have been written. Ancient (and modern) myths abound, most of which were intended to be accepted as fact and inform the reader (or hearer) about the exploits of one god or another. Did Joseph Smith find golden plates hidden in a mountain that were written in "Reformed Egyptian?" Did he translate those plates using his magical "seer's stone"?

As a skeptic I'm inclined to look at the whole picture and attempt to ascertain whether or not any of it makes sense. The NT canon makes no more sense than Joseph Smith's writings.

As I was working my way through your "Argument to the Best Explanation" I found myself shaking my head with each point. Every point favors the idea that the myth of Jesus was created from whole cloth by wishful believers wanting to convert others to their cause.

That, of course, is my opinion. Yet it seems to be a reasonable and sensible one to me. Which is why I take umbrage at your earlier statement:
I accept that to you this seems reasonable and even "damnably obvious". I've been looking at it for a long time and reach a different conclusion. So far you've presented opinion that these things seem reasonable. I'd be interested in seeing some of that "corroboration" of which you spoke earlier. Until then, I remain justifiably skeptical of all of it.

Toto

I don't think you have evaluated the ABE correctly. I would point out that Richard Carrier used the ABE to conclude that Earl Doherty's mythicist hypothesis was a better explanation than the standard historicist model. Did you miss that?

The question of how to separate myth from reality in the gospels (assuming that there is some history included there) has been the subject of much discussion but no firm conclusion. The criteria that historical Jesus scholars use are still debated in the literature, and do not stand up under scrutiny.

You've still got nothing, except for your misplaced reliance on some offhand comments by Bart Ehrman, who was not even willing to join the Jesus Project to delve into the question of the historicity of Jesus.

ApostateAbe

Thank you for your time and patience with me, Atheos. I noticed that you were a mod of BC&H after I made the post, and I felt like an idiot. :-P Sorry.

I should have directly answered your question. I'll make you a list of items in the Christian myths that are historically corroborated. Yes, they are mostly people and places, but some are significant in that they were not necessarily well known throughout the ancient world. These are the things that are corroborated:

• The town of Nazareth.
• The Passover celebration in Jerusalem.
• King Herod.
• The Jewish sect of Pharisees.
• The Jewish sect of Sadducees.
• Pontius Pilate as ruler of Jerusalem.
• John the Baptist as rural baptizing cult leader.
• The apostle Paul.
• James, the brother of Jesus.
• The apostle Peter, also known as Cephas.
• The apostle John.
• The Samaritans.

Many of these items can be easily explained as what you may normally expect from any ordinary myth. The gospels mention the Emperor Tiberius, and Tiberius was certainly the emperor at the time. So what? Anyone can make Tiberius the emperor within the fairy story given what was widely known at the time. It is not an easy explanation, however, with the town of Nazareth. Many towns and cities were noted by the ancients, such as Philo and Josephus, but they never mentioned Nazareth. It grew in time, and note of it was made in the third century CE, and it is today a bustling city in Galilee. But, Christians apparently had an inside scoop on at least some things that were not widely known. Some mythicists have gone out on a limb and proposed that Nazareth really did not exist in the first century CE, which requires that it was founded by Christian pilgrims looking for the city in Galilee, and archaeologists are wrong about a first-century-seeming dugout they found in some archaeological ruins in Nazareth.

Because of the scarcity of historical information, it is not good historical practice to disbelieve everything in the New Testament that does not have external corroboration. That tends to be the default position of the superskeptics, and it may be a good working practice in modern times, with an abundance of information and thousands of media. However, there were only two historians of the time and region (1st century Mesopotamia) whose writings remain extant--Josephus and Philo of Alexandria. Josephus mentions Pilate, Herod, John the Baptist, James and Jesus. Philo mentions only Pilate and Herod. Josephus may have left out John the Baptist, if only for an arbitrary decision about who struck him as important to write about. The Baptists and Christians were apparently two rival sects, and the myths of their founders each lasted through the time of Josephus in 90 CE. The vast majority our knowledge about the founding of Christianity must come from Christian sources. The obvious problem is that the earliest sources, while they got a handful of things correct, got many more things wrong. So how do we separate the probable points of reality from the mere myth and lies? We use criteria to help us decide. The best criteria reflect statistical tendencies about what claims are true and trustworthy and conversely what claims are simply made-up.

A very important historical criterion, which mythicists tend to scorn the most, is the criterion of dissimilarity, also known as the criterion of embarrassment. If a claim seems to closely align with the source's direct and obvious interests, then it is less likely that the claim is trustworthy. If a claim seems to oppose the source's direct and obvious interests, then it is more likely to be trustworthy. If a claim seems neutral to the interests of the sources, then it is given moderate support by the criterion of dissimilarity.

The superskeptics tend to discard the criterion of dissimilarity. If they were to accept it, then it would make their own theories seem absurd. The objections that they tend to offer is that the criterion clearly does not work all of the time. We can easily find claims within historical myth that are plainly unrealistic yet somewhat embarrassing to high-status characters. For example, there is a Christian gospel myth that Peter walked on water toward Jesus, and he started to sink because of his lack of faith. The apostle Peter was a Christian hero, but this story is embarrassing. But, the story involves a miracle and is probably not true. Therefore, the criterion of dissimilarity fails.

That is why I must very strongly emphasize that the criterion of dissimilarity is not absolute law, and nobody claims it to be. It is only a rough guide, one of the many tools we use to find the most probable explanations. I would explain Peter as a character that the myths used as a model for humility and imperfection. We use the criterion of dissimilarity every day without knowing it. We judge the trustworthiness of any claim largely (not completely) by comparing it to the interests of the person making the claim. Yesterday, I talked to a salesman at a Honda dealership who told me that the Honda Fit is a better deal than the Ford Fiesta, because Hondas very much tend to last much longer than Fords. He told me to ask my friends. So I did. My friend told me that she owned a Ford Fiesta for nine years, ran up 100,000 miles, and beat the shit out of it before she finally had to get rid of it. The car salesman has reason to lie, and my friend does not. Therefore, I think Ford Fiesta is a better deal. The salesman may have been right (I have heard very good things about Hondas), but, with no other information, I judge his specific claim to be at least a little exaggerated, if not a complete lie.

There are many more criteria than that, but I think that is the main criterion we use to pick out which points of the Christian narrative ought to be trusted. Based largely on that criterion, these are the portions of the Jesus myth I think are plausible from a historical standpoint:

• Jesus was a child of Joseph and Mary.
• Jesus was from Nazareth in Galilee.
• Jesus had four brothers named James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas.
• Joseph was a wood worker.
• Jesus was baptized as a follower of John the Baptist.
• Jesus was divided from his own family.
• Jesus encouraged his disciples to separate from their families to follow him.
• Jesus traveled the rural countryside.
• Jesus had a small band of disciples.
• Jesus predicted that the end of the existing world order would come very soon, by a heavenly army led by the Son of Man, within this generation and before his listeners will die, and a new kingdom of God would be established.
• Jesus made enemies of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Jewish authorities.
• Jesus was betrayed by his disciple Judas.
• Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate.

Each of those items are not absolutely certain. They are merely the seeming best explanation for the origins of what became the myths.

For example, it is otherwise difficult to explain why the myth held that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, since Jesus was supposedly sinless and the greater of John, not the lesser.

• The gospel of Matthew makes the embarrassment clear with an objection from John himself, and Jesus explains it as a way "to fulfill all righteousness," whatever that is supposed to mean.
  
• The gospel of Mark tells of John the Baptist, but leaves out the baptism, perhaps because it would be especially awkward given that Mark explicitly says that John baptized "for the forgiveness of sins."
  
• The gospel of Luke tells the tale that Jesus was baptized only after John was locked up in prison, and the baptism was actually a way to enact a miracle, as a heavenly right of passage for Jesus.
  
• The gospel of John has an approach similar to Mark--leaves out the baptism.

Some superskeptics have proposed various explanations for what may have motivated belief in John baptizing Jesus if it didn't actually happen--I think Robert Price explained it as possibly a religious right of passage--but the best explanation has the most explanatory power for why the four gospels seem to awkwardly beat around the bush or avoid or justify the act. And the winning explanation in that respect seems to be that John really did baptize Jesus.

If the belief that Jesus was just a myth is the only detail contained in one's model of the origin of Christianity, then it doesn't seem all that bad. You can run down the list of ABE and think, "Yep, nothing so wrong about that." The problems become apparent only after one really engages in the debate. Try to choose the best mythicist explanation for the pair of apocalyptic deadlines found in each synoptic gospel. Then, run down the list with a focus on only the two competing explanations for those prophecies. See which explanation wins. Do the same for the crucifixion of Jesus. The same for the connection between Jesus and Nazareth. The same for the baptism of Jesus. Ask mythicists what they believe the best explanations for those things are. Choose or build a model for the beginnings of Christianity to rival the historicist model (there are many mythicist models to choose from). Be sure to spot and minimize the implausibilities, the unevidenced ad hoc explanations, the inconsistencies, the special pleadings, the unusual elements, and so on.

ApostateAbe

Thanks, Toto. I would like us to resolve the issue about the commonalities between historical Jesus theories and creationism, you know that thing I don't get, because I would hate for this topic to come up again if we can just resolve it right here. Can you please clarify or justify your objection that the thing I have in common with creationists is that we both believe that there are some things in the Bible that must be true? I object that it is a plain and obvious fact. What is your response?

ETA: Would you accept ABE? I know that Richard Carrier accepts it, which is great. I thought maybe you wouldn't accept it because you have said to me that you refuse to labor under the delusion that we can find the history behind the myths; and ABE, the way Carrier and I apply it, is to do exactly that.

Toto

I'm not sure why you are hung up on this, but are you seriously contending that there are things in the Bible that MUST be true?

I think that the real basis of comparison between the historical Jesus theories and creationism is that creationists look at creation and assume that there must have been a creator or a designer (like the one in Genesis), and HJ scholars look at Christianity and assume that it must have had a creator like the figure of Jesus in the gospels.

What are you talking about? Carrier uses the ABE to discredit you and the historical Jesus paradigm. You have nothing in common with Carrier.

I have to ask if you have had a bit too much caffeine or something? You are posting vast amounts of stuff that has been discussed and discredited in BCH, as if we hadn't already had this discussion. There is no evidence that Nazareth existed - archeological remains close to the current settlement of Nazareth do not prove that there was a city named Nazareth in the first century. The criterion of dissimilarity is useless for uncovering historical fact - check the latest discussions among standard scholars. There is no historical evidence for the existence of Paul. I could go on. But what's the point?

Toto

So when a story starts out, "this is a true story, it all happened to a cousin of my friend, who investigated the facts..." you conclude that the story is a) true b) mostly true c) urban legend or d) fictional from the get go?

(This is a test of your powers of critical thinking.)

On the contrary, it is not strikingly obvious. It requires a extra epicycle of mythmaking to explain why the brother James, who in the gospels thought that Jesus was insane, suddenly became the head of a church that believed in him. The identification of James in Galatians with gospel James is based on long Christian tradition, but not on any clear evidence. But you may be right about "they don't give it much more thought."

Are you seriously contending that there is some sort of well formed consensus on the dates of the gospels, the use of the criteria, Q [which is not a gospel] ? Please cite some evidence.

But I don't think that mythicists throw these "under the bus." They carefuly document the deficiencies in these accepted beliefs or show how they are consistent with mythicism.

ApostateAbe

I'm not sure why you are hung up on this, but are you seriously contending that there are things in the Bible that MUST be true?

Answer: Yes. There are some things in the Bible that must be true, though it is a bit misleading to emphasize the word "must." My position is that there are some things in the Bible that very plainly are true. For example, one of those things is the claim that Tiberius was a Roman emperor. Yeah, nobody would deny that, right? Not only must it be true, but it is true. Therefore, I think you may have meant something else with your objection, and I am just not understanding what you are saying. I am hung up on this point because it is important for us to have common ground so we can understand each other and learn from each other. I need to understand why points that seem to be plainly obvious to me are unjustified assumptions to you.

I think that the real basis of comparison between the historical Jesus theories and creationism is that creationists look at creation and assume that there must have been a creator or a designer (like the one in Genesis), and HJ scholars look at Christianity and assume that it must have had a creator like the figure of Jesus in the gospels.

I think that is a very good point. The HJ camp believes in a "special creation" and "intelligent design" of a new complex reproducing system, much like the creationists, whereas the MJ camp believes in something much more gradual, older, and evolutionary, like the evolutionists. I think that is another commonality that is about the shared conclusions, and I am glad that you made the point, because I haven't thought of it that way previously. Thanks.

Carrier uses the ABE to discredit you and the historical Jesus paradigm. You have nothing in common with Carrier.

But, we both accept ABE. We have at least that much in common. Do you accept ABE? I am very curious about this, because I would love to clarify what I thought I knew about the way you make decisions. You have told me many things that have led me to believe that you would not accept ABE, and I need to know if I am wrong so I can apologize. Thanks.

No, I haven't had too much caffeine.