Freethought & Rationalism Archive

ApostateAbe · 01-20-2010, 07:12 AM

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Originally Posted by gurugeorge

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

gurugeorge, I appreciate your judgments. When I say that there should be no default position, that includes the position of there being a historical Jesus to explain the Christian accounts. I take the theory of a historical Jesus to best explain the evidence, not because we automatically try to explain every mythical character with a historical human being. If a post-apocalyptic archaeologist were to find a Superman comic book, then ideally he would try to find the best explanation for Superman, be it with a historical person or a purely fictional character. The evidence would probably suggest a fictional character, given that it fits the patterns of fictional comic books--he is set in a completely fictional setting and the comics seem designed purely for entertainment. Jesus, in turn, fits the patterns of historical people--a cult leader who became the figurehead of a religion.

But how do you know it isn't also a story designed purely for entertainment, or a lie, or any of those other possibilities? You can have an entertaining story about a religious cult leader.

OK, I'm stretching it, but you get the point - there's a whole swathe of possible contexts for those texts that could instantly make them NOT EVIDENTIARY AT ALL, of anything.

I think you have to separately justify why you are taking the story elements as evidence of something.

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Not only that, but there is a religious adherent who attests to meeting Jesus' brother and disciple--the brother as if it was nothing unexpected and the disciple as if the writer hated the disciple's guts. We could not possibly expect to find such a thing for Superman or any other merely mythical or fictional character. So I say that we do know that Jesus was a historical person, or at least we should know, and it is only a matter of facing that probability for what it really is. We should be saving our uncertainty for matters that are genuinely uncertain.

The story in the gospels fits the story of a cult leader, sure - but the historicist still has to show that the story is evidentiary of fact. Knowing that a character in a story met and talked to another character in a story is totally different from knowing that the story about one character meeting another actually happened.

It's like this: sure, we have some writings that are part of a tradition that couches them in a way that makes them seem evidentiary (they're supposed to be written by eyewitnesses).

But we are under no obligation to follow that tradition, and treat them as evidentiary in any way, until we know (to some grain of detail) who wrote them, when, and (hopefully) why. Until then, they're in a sort of limbo. You can certainly imagine what it would be like if those texts really are eyewitness accounts, or sufficiently connected to eyewitnesses to serve as evidence - then you'd get some variation on the HJ theme. But I don't see any strong reason to believe that they actually are eyewitness acounts, or connected with eyewitnessing.

The strongest example you've given, the "brother of the Lord" one, just isn't convincing enough, given the arguments I've previously given you about that subject. As I've said before, it's the eyeballing connection that's needed to prove historicity - not the eyeballing of one character in the story by another (although that might be supportive), but some reason to believe that the story contains eyewitness testimony.

That was the whole point of the gospels - for generations, they were sufficient proof for most people that Jesus had existed, because most people trusted the Church's hype, that they were eyewitness accounts.

But when you gut them of that traditional elevation in epistemological status - well, they could be anything. Whether they are eyewitness accounts is one of the first things we would need to analyze. Because if there's no evidence of the eyeballing of a biological human entity in them, there's no evidence of a historical person.

I mentioned to spin that there is probability to validate the history of texts, although not complete certainty, and complete certainty is what the minimalists demand or else we can't use the text for anything historical but a possible fairy tale. The earliest known fragment of text of the Epistle to the Galatians is dated to the second century, and the provenance is unknown, except that it was probably an early Christian church given the contents. To the minimalist, that is where it would end, and we simply can't trust that some joker didn't write the epistle just for laughs. But, we still have the contents of the epistle, and, based on those contents, we can make probable inferences. The epistle begins with the author identifying himself as Paul. This obviously isn't enough, because there are many known forgeries of Paul's letters. So we try to match the point of view of the letter to one of the points of view of the possible authors. For example, the author gives an account of the Council of Jerusalem with a point of view that is contrary to the point of view given in Acts of the Apostles, with hostility against another apostle. Therefore, it is likely that it was Paul himself and not a forger who wrote the Epistle to the Galatians.

None of this is for certain, and that is the essential difference between a minimalist and anyone else, or a postmodernist and a modernist. Yeah, you can take the minimalist position that the uncertainty of the only evidence kills all of the arguments, and that is where it ends. You'll always be a voice of criticism and never a voice of construction of any probable theories of early Christianity. It isn't necessarily a bad thing. spin and aa5874 both love it.

ApostateAbe · 01-20-2010, 07:15 AM

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Originally Posted by Chaucer

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

But, my favorite evidence is much more direct. They are Paul's meetings of two people.

Paul in his letter to the Galatians reported on meeting James and Peter (Cephas). James is given the identifying title, "the Lord's brother," and Peter is identified as a strong leader of the Christian church. James is mentioned only in passing and Peter is mentioned in opposition with the author Paul. James is reported as a brother of Jesus in the Christian gospels and in the writing of Josephus, and Peter is identified as a direct disciple of Jesus in the gospels. There can be many explanations for these things:

Maybe "Cephas" isn't really Peter, and the verse identifying him as Peter is only an interpolation, and the writer of the gospel of John used the Epistle to the Galatians to link the two.

Maybe Peter is real, but he was chosen as a character in a fictional story or elaborate lie or myth.

Maybe "the Lord's brother" was only a title of religious respect the same way Paul uses "brother" or "brothers" to mean "friend," and the fact that "James" was listed as one of the brothers of Jesus according to Matthew, Mark and Josephus was only a coincidence since the name was so common. Maybe the title was known to the early Christians but not to later Christian tradition.

Maybe "the Lord's brother" was merely a redaction.

But the most probable explanation is that there really was a man named Jesus who had a brother named James and a disciple named Peter, both of whom met Paul.

We needn't even hang everything on this Galatians encounter -- even if we choose to zero in on the 7 authentic Paulines only. We needn't even circumscribe ourselves to considerations of James only. For there is also the telling passage in 1 Corinthians 9:5, where, among other things, Paul is careful to separate out the apostles from the siblings of Jesus -

5 Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

There isn't just James, then, as far as Paul is concerned, but at least two siblings of Jesus whom Paul clearly views as siblings of Jesus since he's careful here to term the apostles as apostles. I'm surprised that HJ-ers don't use this verse more than the verse in Galatians, since it strikes me as the more straightforward. (In any case, all of 1 Corinthians, for its trio of direct Jesus quotes plus its additional references to the Lord's brotherS and to a crucifixion "in this age" [yes, yes, I know the "demons" reading -- yawn], seems worth a separate niche all its own among the authentic Paulines.)

Chaucer

Thank you, those are good points.

spin · 01-20-2010, 07:34 AM

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

...minimalists...minimalist...minimalist...postmod ernist ...modernist...minimalist

spin

spin · 01-20-2010, 07:49 AM

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

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Originally Posted by Chaucer

We needn't even hang everything on this Galatians encounter -- even if we choose to zero in on the 7 authentic Paulines only. We needn't even circumscribe ourselves to considerations of James only. For there is also the telling passage in 1 Corinthians 9:5, where, among other things, Paul is careful to separate out the apostles from the siblings of Jesus -

5 Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

There isn't just James, then, as far as Paul is concerned, but at least two siblings of Jesus whom Paul clearly views as siblings of Jesus since he's careful here to term the apostles as apostles. I'm surprised that HJ-ers don't use this verse more than the verse in Galatians, since it strikes me as the more straightforward. (In any case, all of 1 Corinthians, for its trio of direct Jesus quotes plus its additional references to the Lord's brotherS and to a crucifixion "in this age" [yes, yes, I know the "demons" reading -- yawn], seems worth a separate niche all its own among the authentic Paulines.)

Thank you, those are good points.

You need to switch on your crap detector once in a while, Abe.

Nobody seems to think despite the fact that Paul has no difficulty using the name of Jesus, which he used over 120 times in his letters, that if Paul wanted to refer to the brothers of Jesus, he would have used the term he is exceptionally happy using. If he meant the brothers of Jesus, why didn't he say so? This is just further argument by anachronism.

You can't see the blunder of assuming that Paul meant Jesus when he used "lord" in "the brothers of the lord", especially when it is clear that Paul is neither a binitarian nor trinitarian, so there is no reason to think that he would naturally use the non-titular "lord" for Jesus, when it is a normal diapora Jewish reference to god.

spin

aa5874 · 01-20-2010, 07:52 AM

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

...I mentioned to spin that there is probability to validate the history of texts, although not complete certainty, and complete certainty is what the minimalists demand or else we can't use the text for anything historical but a possible fairy tale. The earliest known fragment of text of the Epistle to the Galatians is dated to the second century, and the provenance is unknown, except that it was probably an early Christian church given the contents. To the minimalist, that is where it would end, and we simply can't trust that some joker didn't write the epistle just for laughs. But, we still have the contents of the epistle, and, based on those contents, we can make probable inferences. The epistle begins with the author identifying himself as Paul. This obviously isn't enough, because there are many known forgeries of Paul's letters. So we try to match the point of view of the letter to one of the points of view of the possible authors. For example, the author gives an account of the Council of Jerusalem with a point of view that is contrary to the point of view given in Acts of the Apostles, with hostility against another apostle. Therefore, it is likely that it was Paul himself and not a forger who wrote the Epistle to the Galatians.

Why do you always ignore the very first verse of Galatians?

It is clear that the Pauline writer did not consider Jesus just a man but some kind of supernatural being that was raised from the dead.

Galatians 1.1

Quote:

Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead)...

Why do you discard Galatians 1.11-12

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11But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.

12For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Why do you ignore the fact that meeting someone who claimed to be the brother of Jesus is virtually useless as historical evidence for Jesus?

It is evident that the Pauline Epistles are about belief. The Pauline writer could have only believed James was the brother of the Lord or wanted his audience to believe so.

You appear to have ignored the theory or very likely possibility that the Pauline writings are non-historical since there is information found in the Epistles that are most likely to be fiction.

And further, you cannot show that the Jesus of the Pauline writer is different to the Jesus of the NT, the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God, the Son of God of the virgin Mary without a human father.

The Canonical NT is not about a mere man at all but a God/man. You must find an historical source for your theory or else your arguments will be EASILY destroyed.

ApostateAbe · 01-20-2010, 08:56 AM

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Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi Spin,

This is an excellent point by point and almost line by line response.

The crux of ApostateAbe's argument and the real textual part is the fact that in one of the twenty-one epistles in the New Testament, the author appears to interact with Gospel characters. It is not throughout the whole epistle where this happens, but in only one section, about 10% of the epistle where it occurs. This presents a problem because it is so exceptional. We can say that 99% of the epistles have no relationship to the gospels and thus does not support its historicity in any fashion. This leaves the 1% to do the work of testimony virtually alone. But even that one percent does not support it substantially. It is not like Paul says that he talked with James, Jesus' brother and James told him how they hung out together as kids and Jesus' would cure goats and bring sheep back from the dead, or how he was once lost in a temple and his parents found him. No the only connection is that we find the phrase "the Lord's brother" connected to the name "James." Likewise, with Peter, we don't have Peter saying, "Oh man, Paul, you should have seen Jesus that night in the Garden, he was really sweating, I ain't never seen a dude so sure he was going to die." Instead, it is the phrase "apostle" and "Chephas" which are matched to the gospel which appears to use the term "apostle" once or twice to refer to the disciples (Mark 6:30) and the term "Peter", which means "Rock," just as "Cephas" means "Rock."

In both cases, we have to do a small transformation. We have to transform "Lord" into "Jesus" and "Chephas" into "Peter." When we have made these translations, then the two references kind of, sort of, almost exactly match
the references in the gospels. Can it really lift the weight that it is being asked to carry? Can these two kind of, sort of, almost exact references really be the proof that the gospels are historical?

Imagine a poor person who wishes to believe in angels. They find hundreds of old photographs from the 19th century and one them is a faded picture of a beautiful child and if you look really, really close you can see that the child is dressed in an angel outfit. "Eureka," shouts the poor person, "Who can deny angels now?"
Who has the heart or lack thereof to tell this poor person the bad news?

Sincerely,

Philosopher Jay

I am not sure that your analogy fits, but maybe I am not understanding you correctly. All it takes is one isolated hair to make a difference between guilty and not guilty. And a passing a reference is all it takes to infer a connection to Jesus. Arguments are made that the passages are redactions, so maybe that is how the argument about 1% is relevant. "The Lord's brother" is an example. If the phrase wasn't written by Paul, then the evidence would be considerably weaker. But, there seems to be no reason to believe it is a redaction except to make a particular theory seem plausible. Same for the passage that identifies Cephas as Peter. They are passages that seem meant only to clarify, not to make any significant point. There is no evidence that there was any question or dispute in early Christianity that Jesus existed as a human being (except among the Marcionites, who acknowledged that Jesus seemingly existed as a human being).

show_no_mercy · 01-20-2010, 09:10 AM

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

There is no evidence that there was any question or dispute in early Christianity that Jesus existed as a human being (except among the Marcionites, who acknowledged that Jesus seemingly existed as a human being).

This is completely false. The main argument in both pre and post Nicaea Christianity was what exactly Jesus was, and was probably the main point of schisms in all forms of Christianity. These ranged from the "heretics'" view that Jesus was only a spirit being that looked human to the later post-Nicaea split in "orthodox" Christianity over whether Jesus was god in the flesh or a human with god's spirit in him or some sort of hybrid. These debates over the extent and bredth of Jesus' human nature led to things like the Arian or Nestorian heresies, and massive amounts of excommunications. The modern view that he was 100% god and 100% man is a post-Nicaea invention/concession.

All of these Christians thought Jesus existed. The 1 million dollar question was about what kind of nature he existed as. This was the fundamental question that spanned from the Marcionites to the Albigensians; doubts about him being on earth period is a pretty recent phenomenon.

spin · 01-20-2010, 09:18 AM

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Arguments are made that the passages are redactions, so maybe that is how the argument about 1% is relevant. "The Lord's brother" is an example.

No, it's not. It's a problem to you because you have to Assume you understand what it means and then deliberately translate it in a tendentious way. I don't claim that it is a redaction, never have.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

If the phrase wasn't written by Paul, then the evidence would be considerably weaker. But, there seems to be no reason to believe it is a redaction except to make a particular theory seem plausible. Same for the passage that identifies Cephas as Peter.

Here once again you ignore the evidence. The two verses about Peter, which assert Petrine ascendency, are in conflict with the context, a context which already knows Cephas, which sees Cephas in a subordinate position to James, and which ascribes to the three pillars what these verses ascribe solely to Peter. When interpolations are noted they have well-known characteristics. Your response is to ignore.

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

They are passages that seem meant only to clarify, not to make any significant point.

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

There is no evidence that there was any question or dispute in early Christianity that Jesus existed as a human being (except among the Marcionites, who acknowledged that Jesus seemingly existed as a human being).

Like there is no evidence that there was any question or dispute that Ebion existed as a human being.

spin

aa5874 · 01-20-2010, 09:30 AM

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

..... All it takes is one isolated hair to make a difference between guilty and not guilty. And a passing a reference is all it takes to infer a connection to Jesus. Arguments are made that the passages are redactions, so maybe that is how the argument about 1% is relevant. "The Lord's brother" is an example. If the phrase wasn't written by Paul, then the evidence would be considerably weaker. But, there seems to be no reason to believe it is a redaction except to make a particular theory seem plausible. Same for the passage that identifies Cephas as Peter. They are passages that seem meant only to clarify, not to make any significant point. There is no evidence that there was any question or dispute in early Christianity that Jesus existed as a human being (except among the Marcionites, who acknowledged that Jesus seemingly existed as a human being).

But,the claim in the Pauline writings that Paul met "the Lord's brother" is not analogous to finding "one isolated hair" or finding physical evidence.

The passage with "the Lord's brother" is hearsay.

And, there were many more disputes about Jesus Christ other than Marcion. There is no historical source to show that people who were called Christians started only with the belief in Jesus Christ, and there is no historical source to show that Jesus Christ believers did not originate with a God/man.

It is not true that at all that there was no dispute that Jesus was only human being. It is the other way. There was no dispute that Jesus was DIVINE or Supernatural, based on a writer called Tertullian.

This is Tertullian "On the Flesh of Christ" 1

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...Let us examine our Lord's bodily substance, for about His spiritual nature all are agreed...

You are just providing erroneous information or fallacies about the agreed nature of Jesus in antiquity.

Chaucer · 01-20-2010, 10:07 AM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Thank you, those are good points.

You need to switch on your crap detector once in a while, Abe.

Nobody seems to think despite the fact that Paul has no difficulty using the name of Jesus, which he used over 120 times in his letters, that if Paul wanted to refer to the brothers of Jesus, he would have used the term he is exceptionally happy using. If he meant the brothers of Jesus, why didn't he say so? This is just further argument by anachronism.

You can't see the blunder of assuming that Paul meant Jesus when he used "lord" in "the brothers of the lord", especially when it is clear that Paul is neither a binitarian nor trinitarian, so there is no reason to think that he would naturally use the non-titular "lord" for Jesus, when it is a normal diapora Jewish reference to god.

spin

You fail to address how come the passage in 1 Corinthians, one of the 7 authentic Paulines, makes a clear distinction between the apostles versus the Lord's brotherS:

5 Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

Once the apostles are termed apostles and Cephas and the Lord's brotherS are referenced separately from them, it's clear that Paul is making careful reference here to three different groups (or in the case of Cephas, individuals). You don't address that, but that is why I find this verse more indicative (among the authentic Paulines, that is) than the one in Galatians. Here, one needn't even concentrate on James at all. The clear distinction here between apostles versus Lord's brotherS seems more telling than anything in Galatians.

Chaucer

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