Gamera

Needless to say, Aristophanes is writing a fiction on its face. To derive historicity of a person from an avowed fiction seems about as unreliable as one can get. If the gospels claimed to be fictions, skeptics would of course have a field day about that.

The fact is Socrates is attested to by (a) a playwright writing popular fiction; (b) a philosophy who's running a business where the name "Socrates" apparently has some cache, and (b) a disgruntled ex patriot who had a political bone to pick with Athens.

It really doesn't get any more unreliable. Yet most people have no problem accepting the historicity of Socrates. In contrast the texts supporting Jesus's historicity (again whatever that ambiguous term means), have a much less egregious political and personal agenda.

Toto

I don't understand - is there any text supporting Jesus' historicity that does not have an egregious political agenda?

And while most people have no problem seeing Socrates as a historical figure, most would also not have any problem seeing him as a purely literary creation.

Gamera

I think the gospels and the epistles have an obvious religious agenda, but by no means an obvious political agenda. Indeed, the writers were clearly on the "outs" with the empire and were not writing under imperial auspices (like poor Josephus under house arrest), or for that matter in favor of the forces against the powers that be.

I think we can concoct a political agenda from the texts, but it takes a lot of effort, is speculative and by no means obvious. If anything these texts seem to try to steer clear of a political agenda unlike the conflicted Josphus or the nostalgic Tacitus.

What do you think the "obvious" political agenda of these texts are?

chapka

I think the key is the "ambiguous term." I don't think most people do accept the historicity of Socrates in anything like the sense that's being debated here.

Specifically, I always assumed that Socrates, whether he existed or not, was in the Dialogues, for practical purposes, essentially a character created by Plato. I don't think anyone thinks the Platonic dialogues were verbatim transcriptions (with the possible exception of the Apology, I guess, which is the sort of formal speech that was often transcribed more or less verbatim). After all, the scholarly community doesn't talk about "Socratic ideals" or "Socratic forms."

So "historicity" in this case is pretty vague, which is one reason I'm not actually generally that interested in these arguments. Once you're talkiing about a "historical" Jesus who probably didn't say or do anything attributed to him in the Gospels with the possible exception of getting executed by the Romans, does it really matter? That's the level of historical "support" Socrates gets. The main difference, as other have pointed out, is that a thesis that Socrates didn't really exist wouldn't actually make that much difference to the casual reader of Crito or The Republic.

Clivedurdle

The history of King Arthur is fascinating. I understand there might have been a late Roman knight, but he has minimal connection with the various incarnations, early celtic stuff, - Geoffrey, then a grave found in Glastonbury complete with 12th century writing, then the Tudors trying to unite Britain, fast forward to the Victorian romances and Hollywood.

Probably more incarnations than Jesus!

(How would you go about creating an Arthurian religion?)

chapka

And while we're at it...

First, I would dispute that Aristophanes was writing "fiction" in any meaningful sense. "Fiction" and "nonfiction" are later categories that didn't have their modern meanings at that time and place. But yes, it's clear that nobody thought that Aristophanes was quoting Sophocles verbatim.

What Aristophanes was writing was satire. And satire only makes sense if the audience is familiar with the object of your satire, either as an individual or an archetype. If the punchline of a joke is someone you've never heard of, you're probably not going to laugh. The fact that Aristophanes thought the audience would laugh at Sophocles implies that he thought they knew who he was and what he represented.

If there were surviving satires from Jesus' lifetime making fun of him, that would actually be fairly strong evidence for historicity. Ironically, of course, the medieval Church would almost certainly have seen to it that any such evidence that fell into their hands was destroyed, either actively or through neglect.

Gamera

I think this is a good point, but it then raises the question of what it means to say "somebody existed" and said or did such and such. Doesn't that always mean, we have a text that says he existed and said such and such. We never have more access to "historicity" than historiography. So the focus must be on the text, not on some concept of reality that we have no access to except through a text.

Gamera

Moliere satirized a lot of "types" that never existed in reality. The joke is that it's at the expense of a type of person. Indeed, the satirizing of types was a common trope in Shakespeare and the entire Renaissance.

is Aristophanes satirizing the "type" of the verbose self-satisfied philosophe who has an answer for ever question? Perhaps. In any case, the very fact that Socrates appears in a play should be an alarm bell about his historicity.

Doug Shaver

So what? Are you suggesting that people with a religious agenda tend to be more scrupulous than people with a political agenda?

Johnny Skeptic

At http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...tml#Conclusion, Richard Carrier says the following:

Conclusion

When we compare the standard historicist theory (SHT) with Doherty's ahistoricist or "mythicist" theory (DMT) by the criteria of the Argument to the Best Explanation, I must admit that, at present, Doherty wins on at least four out of the six criteria (scope, power, plausibility, and ad hocness ; I think DMT is equal to SHT on the fifth criterion of disconfirmation ; neither SHT nor DMT wins on the sixth and decisive criterion). In other words, Doherty's theory is simply superior in almost every way in dealing with all the facts as we have them. However, it is not overwhelmingly superior, and that leaves a lot of uncertainty. For all his efforts, Jesus might have existed after all. But until a better historicist theory is advanced, I have to conclude it is at least somewhat more probable that Jesus didn't exist than that he did. I say this even despite myself, as I have long been an opponent of ahistoricity.

However, I think the fault is more with historicists who have stubbornly failed to develop a good theory of historicity. By simply resting on the feeble laurels of prima facie plausibility ("Jesus existed because everyone said so") and subjective notions of absurdity ("I can't believe Jesus didn't exist!"), the existence of Jesus has largely been taken for granted, even by competent historians who explicitly try to argue for it. The evidence is selectively mined for confirming evidence, and all challenging evidence is ignored, especially when it is weird. But Doherty deals with the weird evidence in a way few historicists ever have. In fact, I have never seen any historicist case made by comprehensively explaining all the evidence in this way. At present, historicists "can" account for all the evidence, but they do so at great cost to their theory's merits, building ad hocness, or diminishing scope, power, or plausibility. Worse, each problem by itself would not be serious, but to have to resort to such excuses for hundreds of such problems is very serious indeed, a problem DMT avoids.

And it is for these reasons I am forced to rule against the historicist case, even if by a small margin. Maybe someone can finally take Doherty's thesis seriously and develop a single, coherent theory of Jesus' existence that explains all the evidence as well as Doherty's theory does, or better. As I have not seen it tried, I cannot say it can't be done. But someone is going to have to do it if they want to refute Doherty. Merely picking at his arguments, and again flinging prima facie plausibility and subjective notions of absurdity at it like they were heavy artillery, is not going to work.

Finally, all this is not to say that the historicity of Jesus has been refuted or that it is now incredible. Many arguments for historicity remain. They simply are not as abundant, strong, and coherent as Doherty's thesis, no matter how abundant, strong, and coherent they may be. That Jesus existed remains possible, and if Doherty could take early Christians to court for the crime of fabricating a historical Jesus, they would go free on reasonable doubt. Still, the tables have turned. I now have a more than trivial doubt that Jesus existed, to my surprise. But this stands only by a margin, allowing that I could easily be wrong. This is the impact I believe Doherty's book will have on any careful, objective reader. As an historian, I do not believe truly decisive evidence exists either way. It could. We might turn up proof that Jesus did or didn't exist, if we had better documentation of the 1st century, especially of early Christian communities and beliefs, but we don't, a fate that leaves many an historian in an inescapable position of relative ignorance. As it is, we must entertain the plausible possibility that Jesus didn't exist.

Johnny: It is interesting to note that if Jesus exists, he could easily show up and settle this issue. His unnecessary and detrimental shyness is good evidence that he never existed.