JoeWallack

JW:
Than why is the word in the dictionary?



Joseph

Historical Methodology for HJ/MJ Arguments

ApostateAbe

It is an appropriate word to be used in mathematics. In every other field of empirical inquiry (especially history), you can never plug all of the holes. There will always be many different openings where someone can claim, "But it is possible for this fact to have an alternative interpretation..." And, it will be true. Some people use the word more loosely, that "proof" is the extreme incontestable supremacy of the best explanation. Well, you might have that occasionally in science, but not so much in history. In history, anyone can doubt just about anything.

No Robots

From the wikipedia link:

Josephus's Discourse to the Greeks concerning Hades is a short work published in the translation of Josephus by William Whiston. Erroneously attributed to the Jewish historian since at least the 9th century, it is now believed to be (at least in its original form) the work of Hippolytus of Rome.

Juststeve

Abe:

As is often the case in history there is no slam dunk evidence either way on this issue. I do however think that the weight of the evidence preponderates on the side of there being some real guy who formed the basis of the Jesus story. An itinerent Jewish preacher about whom fanciful things were later said.

Steve

aa5874

So, you had NO slam-dunk evidence for the historical Jesus. And you knew it in advance of your OP.

Your OP is an embellished embarrassment.

avi

Sorry, friend, I do not share this opinion.

I cannot think of a single question, the answer to which, is found in reading the gospels. I certainly cannot establish, based upon the text therein, how the writers were thinking. The text is so muddled and contradictory, and one does not know if this confusion is deliberate or accidental.

But, even if it were a clean text, somehow logically consistent, could one truly deduce from reading a story, a fable, any work of fiction, something about the ideology of the author?

Consider Tolstoy, for example, let's say, War and Peace. Can you imagine, from reading that novel, how Tolstoy would preach sexual abstinence among his communal, "Christian" followers?

What about the author(s) of "Catch-22". Can you predict their ideology based upon reading the novel(s)?

avi

Toto

Abe - this is an essay from R Joseph Hoffman that he has just republished. What part of this quote do you disagree with?

The importance of the historical Jesus

ApostateAbe

With you here.
Still with you.
Still with you. If I were to show the probability of ALL of my assumptions, even just the assumptions likely to be challenged by anyone in this forum, the length of my thread may grow many times over. How do you know that Paul actually wrote that? How do you know that Paul existed? How do you know it wasn't a forger of the 2nd century? How do you know that the gospels were written in the first century? How do you know they weren't written by the stooges of Constantine in the fourth century? How do you know that Matthew and Luke sourced from Mark and Q? How do you know that they are not a continuous multiple layering of edits over many centuries? How do you know that they weren't written as satirical fiction? How do you know that Marcion didn't write them? How do you know that they weren't interpolated here, here, here and there? How do you know what Paul actually means by that? How can you justify using one Christian writing to corroborate an interpretation for a different Christian writing? How do you justify conclusions that are much too uncertain for the evidence to justify? Shoot, I got carried away, sorry.
I think that has been what my reasoning is about, or maybe I don't quite get what you are saying. For example, if the synoptic gospel authors are Christians attempting to evangelize, then what is the best explanation for them quoting Jesus with apocalyptic deadlines? I gave a set of reasons for why the best explanation is a historical Jesus who really did speak such apocalyptic deadlines (John the Baptist, Paul, pattern of history).
Historians "make up stories" to best explain the evidence with probability, and so should we. They don't make up any damned story just to have a story.

In case you are not with me on this point, I typed out some lines from a book by G. R. Elton. In his book, The Practice of History (or via: amazon.co.uk), 2nd Ed., 1967, on pages 78-79, under the heading, "Imagination," he writes:

The point is that the historian comes to the stage of his work at the end of a process which has taken him through the much more independent standards of judgment produced by a rigorous study of the evidence; it is only in the end, when he considers the answers so obtained, that he is entitled to apply the last test: could this have been? And if it clearly could not, he is entitled - indeed, obliged - to reconsider his evidence imaginatively, for he knows that it does not tell him all unless his imagination recreates the circumstances and interdependencies within which the evidence has arisen. The problem most commonly occurs when a sequence of events needs to be explained in which there are gaps. For instance, we know beyond doubt that in the course of the sixteenth century the English Privy Council changed its composition, working habits, and real place in government. We can say with certainty that its numbers were at some point reduced by the exclusion of certain men, hitherto members but thereafter described as councillors at large, not privy councillors. We do not know when this happened; no order exists making this change. Two ways of explaining the sequence are therefore possible. The historian may say that the change was carried out on some particular occasion of which we are ignorant. Or he may say that the reorganized body developed gradually, or by stages, from the other. The latter has usually been the alternative chosen, for historians faced with uncertainty, trained to adhere to the known facts and unwilling to stick their necks out, commonly prefer the safe vagueness of a gradual transition. But apply the criterion of probability, and what happens? Is it possible to envisage a situation in which part of a group of men gradually turned from privy councillors into councillors at large, a title hitherto unknown? Could a change happen without someone telling them that from now on they would be known by this new title, with its reduced functions? And if someone told them, must he not have done so at some particular point in time? In short, is not the second, and usual, explanation simply an evasion of the answer, a vague attempt to cover up ignorance, rendered unconvincing by an unimaginative reconstruction of how things must have happened? Known experience and a little thought prove that they could not have happened according to the formula used.

Imagination, controlled by learning and scholarship, learning and scholarship rendered meaningful by imagination - those are the tools of enquiry possessed by the historian. He knows that what he is studying is real; he knows that he can never recover all of it and that within his area of recovery the certain, the probable and the speculative will coexist. In short, he knows that the process of historical research and reconstruction will never end, but he is also conscious that this does not render his work unreal or illegitimate. But it is incumbent upon him to reduce the uncertainties to a minimum, whether they are introduced by the deficiencies of the evidence, by the intrusion of the enquiring mind, or - most inescapable of all - by the incomplete relationship between the process of history and the evidence it leaves behind.

G. R. Elton has been a highly-respected contributor to the study of history, and he is a historiographer strongly supported by Neil Godfrey, whose blog post led me to read much of the book.
Your reasoning is that Origen made a mistake concerning his reading of Josephus about Ananias, so, heck with it, he could have also made a mistake concerning what Josephus about Jesus.

OK, so we can actually figure out why Origen may have distorted Josephus' account of Ananias. Origen was a Christian apologist who thought it proper that punishment is inflicted on the enemies of Christianity. So, what is your explanation for why he may have distorted Josephus on Jesus? Is it a probable explanation, or is it merely designed to fit your conclusion that Josephus didn't write anything about Jesus?
Thank you for the correction, and that is embarrassing. I will have to revert to my old explanation, that the word "Christ" was too strongly associated with Christianity in Greek society of 90 CE that it would be misleading for Josephus to use the word in any other sense. It is not a certain explanation, ad hoc even, but it is strong enough to match the weak objection, and it is considerably less ad hoc than claiming that both mentions of Christ by Josephus are interpolations, because your explanation contradicts the evidence of Origen, and Josephus' passage of James and Jesus do not match the phrasing that is expected of a Christian interpolator ("called Christ").

ApostateAbe

Yeah, maybe I was being too hyperbolic. It is hard for me to justify that phrasing alongside my claim that there is no such thing as proof in history.

ApostateAbe

I disagree with him on the statement, "The standard of proof is fairly high..." I would love to know his source for that "standard of proof," or if any other historian agrees with him. I would like to know if he holds to that "standard of proof" when evaluating the existence of John the Baptist, who is historically attested only through the religious myths of JtB's own cult and Christians. Maybe Hoffman really is a John-the-Baptist-agnostic, I don't know.