Duvduv

No, I haven't read it, but the scenario involving Domitian and Jews sounds anachronistic
But I wonder why the talmuds or midrashim would not mention anything by the fifth century.

LegionOnomaMoi

Here alas your analogy falls apart. Because the jury or judge can absolutely interpret the evidence and infer from it. For example, it is entirely possible for a cult leader to be on trial for murder, and for a witness claims that they saw him kill the murder victim, but that as (according to the witness' statement and belifes) the cult leader is a higher dimensional being who "cleansed" the victim by piercing him with a "holy blade" no murder was committed. In fact (says the witness) the victim is not dead, but rather has left their body and gone on to the higher dimensions.

Now, the jury in such a situation can absolutely rule that the witness' testimony concerning the murder is evidence enough to convict the cult leader, while at the same time rejecting most of the story and in fact conclude that the witness, who never stated anywhere that the cult leader murdered or even killed the victim, actually did so.

Your reasoning here is quite flawed: There are live t.v. shows which people believe involve recordings of paranormal activities including ghosts. I've had to sit through painful hours at gatherings where some live "reality" t.v. show involving ghost hunters and nights of recording junk at "haunted hauses" which some people actually believe were recordings of the communications/images/effects of ghosts. I think it's ridiculous. But do I think that these people aren't actually there with their recording equipment, or that it is impossible for people like that to believe they are recording paranormal activity? Of course not. I just don't believe their interpretations of what they heard/saw/imagined.

The problem is you don't distinguish between interpretation, inference, probability, and imagination. There are even today actual, historical events which who witness them claim to be miracles, magic, faith healings etc. The historical record is full of actual events in which people around saw something that they interpreted as being miraculous or magical. There have been other historical individuals (e.g., emperors) believed to be living gods, and plenty of magicians/witches/etc. thought to be capable of magical healings or casting working spells.

So, for example, if most ancient historians from Herodotus onwards either accepted myth as history at times or tried to "rationalize" myth into history, I can disregard these aspects of their texts because I disagree with their interpretations of the evidence they are reporting or their accounts of it. This is what both juries and historians do.

The Iliad is a myth, pure and simple. It's a classic example of myth. And for a long time historians thought that nothing about it was historical. Then they found Troy. In fact, there is now a debate concerning mentions of possible "characters" from the Iliad in Hittite texts corresponding to actual people. But even if one rejects the Hittite references, Troy remains. In an epic poem passed on through the centuries representing the genre of myth as completely as one can, turned out to contain at least a tiny nugget of history.


Using that logic, we can conclude that the several centuries of documentation from legal proceedings, local accounts, etc., throughout Europe, which describe "witches" executed for committing acts they clearly could not have (because they involve magic) never happened. There were no executions, there were no people who existed who were thought to be witches, because the sources we have for these people describe them as doing things they could not.

Or, we can use this nifty little thing called historical investigation, or the practice of history, or historiography, and realize that just because we have court records describing the condemnation, confession, and execution of an individual for "witchcraft" they clearly could not have actually committed, we do not need to through the evidence out completely. Rather, we can use historical methods involving reasoning, inference, etc., and conclude that the X person accused of witchcraft indeed existed, and was indeed thought to have successfully cast spells which killed livestock, but that X individual in fact did not.


Yes. I'm equally aware that many are Jewish and agnostic. Bart Ehrman, for example, is a popular agnostic scholar who is best known for his sensationalist works like Misquoting Jesus. Yet he states we have more evidence for Jesus than just about anybody from that period, and that he isn't aware of any serious historian who doubts Jesus existed.

In that case, when historical existence becomes a criminal or civil offense, we'll start worrying about who can be a member of the jury. However, courts are not designed to get the truth above all else. They will not admit conclusive evidence if it is illegally obtained. Evidence can and his hidden from the jury because the police didn't have a warrant before searching the house, or because the accused admitted guilt without being told s/he could have a lawyer present.

Historians are not concerned with ensuring justice is carried out. They are interested in truth. And everyone has biases. It is quite possible for both christian and atheist historians to come up with wildly unlikely interpretations of available evidence because of bias, and it is quite possible for both to also seperate their ideological or religious beliefs from their historical inquiry.


In this case, inductive reasoning based on available evidence. Not long ago (20th century), a man walked into a hospital stating he had been cursed by (if memory serves) a shaman/witch-doctor in his village. There was nothing wrong with him. He still died. So what do I infer from this? That the man was cursed and died from it, that he was lying, that the hospital report was a lie, or that the man was so convinced he was cursed that a well-known and researched phenomenon (placebo effect) caused his healt to fail so completely he died? I'd say the last is most likely.


I don't understand how you are distinguishing credible sources when it comes to ancient history. Virtually every single historian either reports rumor, hearsay, myth, rationalization of myth, etc. Are you discounting them all?

Doug Shaver

Why? I'm not arguing a legal case.

I don't have a degree in history, but I know you you don't have to study law in order to get one.

maryhelena

:banghead:

If you don't care for my suggestion - OK.

aa5874

Again 'EVIDENCE' is the keyword.

Once there is NO EVIDENCE then there can NO inferences or interpretations.

You don't seem to understand that in court trials involving crimes the jurors are really trying to re-construct the past. The jurors are actings as 'historians' by using ONLY the evidence that was ALLOWED.

WITHOUT any evidence the case is thrown out.

It is the very same for the case for the Historical Jesus.

There can be NO inferences in support of an Historical Jesus when NO evidence has ever been found.

The Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline writings and the other books are EVIDENCE that support a Mythological Jesus.

1.In gMark 6, The claim that Jesus Walked on Water is EVIDENCE of
Mythology.

2. In gMark 9, the claim that Jesus transfigured is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

3. In Matthew 1.18-20, the claim that Jesus was FATHERED by a Ghost is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

4. In gLuke 1.26-35, the claim that Jesus was FATHERED by a Ghost is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

5. In John 1, the claim that Jesus was God the Creator is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

6. In John 20, the claim that the resurrected Jesus VISITED the disciples and ate food is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

7. In Acts 1.9, the claim that Jesus Ascended in a cloud is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

8. In Galatians 1, the claim that Paul was NOT the Apostle of a Human being is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

9. In Galatians 1, the claim that Paul did NOT get his gospel from Humans is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

10. In 1 Cor. 15, the claim that Paul was LAST VISITED by the resurrected Jesus is EVIDENCE of Mythology.

Again, based on the EVIDENCE, it can be reasonably INFERRED that Jesus was Mythological.

EVIDENCE is the Keyword.

Now, what and where is the EVIDENCE for an Historical Jesus???

There is NOTHING but Imagination.

Jurors cannot re-construct the past by IMAGINATION.

There can be NO CASE in the first place if there is NO credible evidence.

You ought to know that if a house is found burnt to the ground that it is the rubble, the surviving burnt pieces or whatever is found, NOT what is Missing, NOT what is lost, that is used to re-construct the past event--the cause of the fire.

An historical Jesus cannot be re-constructed from NOTHING. Supposed Missing and supposed Lost evidence has ZERO value for History--Zero value for re-construction of any past event.

To prove my point, I will NOW ask you to re-construct the history of a character called SUSEJ, the Son of a Ghost, God the Creator, that walked on water, transfigured, resurrected and ascended.

The EVIDENCE for Myth Jesus have been found in ALL and EVERY Existing Codices.

LegionOnomaMoi

So can write evidence in caps many times. Congratulations. Excellent tirade which failed to address any of the points I made. So I'll try to make this simpler for you.

We have lots and lots of historical evidence, and even modern t.v. documentaries, "reality" shows, etc., in which individuals report miracles, magic, supernatural events, etc. Using your logic, there were no witch trials, because the EVIDENCE is texts which claim that these individuals performed magic, and therefore (according to your standards) must be rejected as mythical. Hundreds and hundreds of documents, from historical accounts to legal proceedings, are (using your logic) . And we can extend this logic to erase virtually all historical records. Caesar talks about unicorns? He's out to. It's just . Diodorus, Strabo, Dionysius, etc., who all repeatedly use mythology must be utterly rejected. After all, we find in their histories . The accounts of early modern "white wizards," "witches," magicians, etc., and historical analyses of them (e.g., the classical work by Keith Thomas Religion and the Decline of Magic and subsequent improvements in this field of study) can't possibly refer to actual people, because according to these accounts these people performed magic, which is, after all, .

Nevermind the fact that even mythology (like the Iliad) can contain historical facts, or that the strict divide between myth and history didn't exist in the ancient world. It's all .

As for your court analogy:First, what methods/reasoning is behind whether or not evidence is allowed? If, for example, law enforcement officials obtain DNA evidence which would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty, but some unfortunately there was a miscommunication and the evidence was retrieved before a warrant was issued, then the evidence is inadmissable. Why? NOT because "jurors are acting as 'historians' but because the system is designed to protect the guilty rather than convict the innocent. The "ALLOWED" evidence is allowed because the legal system is designed such that the jurors don't get the complete picture. Lots of evidence is discounted not because it doesn't provide additional information which would be helpful in determing the truth, but because the legal system has decided that it is better to prevent the jury from seeing all the evidence by raising the standards to ensure that while guilty parties may go free, the innocent (in principle) will not be convicted.

Second, the jury in a criminal trial isn't out to discover what most likely happened. If every single member of the jury thinks that the best explanation of the evidence is that the accused is guilty, they still are not supposed to find the accused guilty unless there is no reasonable doubt at all.

Third, juries are composed of amateurs ("peers"). History is conducted by trained professionals.

LegionOnomaMoi

So can write evidence in caps many times. Congratulations. Excellent tirade which failed to address any of the points I made. So I'll try to make this simpler for you.

We have lots and lots of historical evidence, and even modern t.v. documentaries, "reality" shows, etc., in which individuals report miracles, magic, supernatural events, etc. Using your logic, there were no witch trials, because the EVIDENCE is texts which claim that these individuals performed magic, and therefore (according to your standards) must be rejected as mythical. Hundreds and hundreds of documents, from historical accounts to legal proceedings, are (using your logic) . And we can extend this logic to erase virtually all historical records. Caesar talks about unicorns? He's out to. It's just . Diodorus, Strabo, Dionysius, etc., who all repeatedly use mythology must be utterly rejected. After all, we find in their histories . The accounts of early modern "white wizards," "witches," magicians, etc., and historical analyses of them (e.g., the classical work by Keith Thomas Religion and the Decline of Magic and subsequent improvements in this field of study) can't possibly refer to actual people, because according to these accounts these people performed magic, which is, after all, .

Nevermind the fact that even mythology (like the Iliad) can contain historical facts, or that the strict divide between myth and history didn't exist in the ancient world. It's all .

As for your court analogy:First, what methods/reasoning is behind whether or not evidence is allowed? If, for example, law enforcement officials obtain DNA evidence which would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty, but some unfortunately there was a miscommunication and the evidence was retrieved before a warrant was issued, then the evidence is inadmissable. Why? NOT because "jurors are acting as 'historians' but because the system is designed to protect the guilty rather than convict the innocent. The "ALLOWED" evidence is allowed because the legal system is designed such that the jurors don't get the complete picture. Lots of evidence is discounted not because it doesn't provide additional information which would be helpful in determing the truth, but because the legal system has decided that it is better to prevent the jury from seeing all the evidence by raising the standards to ensure that while guilty parties may go free, the innocent (in principle) will not be convicted.

Second, the jury in a criminal trial isn't out to discover what most likely happened. If every single member of the jury thinks that the best explanation of the evidence is that the accused is guilty, they still are not supposed to find the accused guilty unless there is no reasonable doubt at all.

Third, juries are composed of amateurs ("peers"). History is conducted by trained professionals.

LegionOnomaMoi

So can write evidence in caps many times. Congratulations. Excellent tirade which failed to address any of the points I made. So I'll try to make this simpler for you.

We have lots and lots of historical evidence, and even modern t.v. documentaries, "reality" shows, etc., in which individuals report miracles, magic, supernatural events, etc. Using your logic, there were no witch trials, because the EVIDENCE is texts which claim that these individuals performed magic, and therefore (according to your standards) must be rejected as mythical. Hundreds and hundreds of documents, from historical accounts to legal proceedings, are (using your logic) . And we can extend this logic to erase virtually all historical records. Caesar talks about unicorns? He's out to. It's just . Diodorus, Strabo, Dionysius, etc., who all repeatedly use mythology must be utterly rejected. After all, we find in their histories . The accounts of early modern "white wizards," "witches," magicians, etc., and historical analyses of them (e.g., the classical work by Keith Thomas Religion and the Decline of Magic and subsequent improvements in this field of study) can't possibly refer to actual people, because according to these accounts these people performed magic, which is, after all, .

Nevermind the fact that even mythology (like the Iliad) can contain historical facts, or that the strict divide between myth and history didn't exist in the ancient world. It's all .

As for your court analogy:First, what methods/reasoning is behind whether or not evidence is allowed? If, for example, law enforcement officials obtain DNA evidence which would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty, but some unfortunately there was a miscommunication and the evidence was retrieved before a warrant was issued, then the evidence is inadmissable. Why? NOT because "jurors are acting as 'historians' but because the system is designed to protect the guilty rather than convict the innocent. The "ALLOWED" evidence is allowed because the legal system is designed such that the jurors don't get the complete picture. Lots of evidence is discounted not because it doesn't provide additional information which would be helpful in determing the truth, but because the legal system has decided that it is better to prevent the jury from seeing all the evidence by raising the standards to ensure that while guilty parties may go free, the innocent (in principle) will not be convicted.

Second, the jury in a criminal trial isn't out to discover what most likely happened. If every single member of the jury thinks that the best explanation of the evidence is that the accused is guilty, they still are not supposed to find the accused guilty unless there is no reasonable doubt at all.

Third, juries are composed of amateurs ("peers"). History is conducted by trained professionals.

LegionOnomaMoi

Yes, I reviewed your site, and read the paper on (yours?) rejected by the Journal of Hellenic studies. I also tried in vain to find a single academic work by an archaeologist or ancient historian who agrees with you. What do we find instead?

From Rutgers et al. (2009). Stable isotope data from the early Christian catacombs of ancient Rome: new insights into the dietary habits of Rome’s early Christians. Journal of Archaeological Science.:

"The catacombs of Rome are enormous subterranean cemeteries
(Pergola, 1997; Rutgers, 2000; Fiocchi Nicolai, 2001). They were
used for burial from the second through the early fifth century AD
and contain the earliest remains of Christians that can be identified
as such. With an estimated total of 500,000 tombs, surprisingly
little work has been done in the areas of historical demography and
physical anthropology (Mancinelli and Vargiu, 1994; Rutgers, 2006;
Blanchard et al., 2007).
Our samples derive from the Liberian Region in the Christian
catacomb of St. Callixtus. The catacomb of St. Callixtus on the Appian
Way is one of the largest early Christian catacombs (De Rossi, 1864–
1867). It originated in the early third century AD through papal
intervention as cemetery for the Christian poor (Fiocchi Nicolai and
Guyon, 2006)."

From Frescos to Papyri to Epigraphy, I searched through journal after journal, surveys of scholarship, monographs, etc., in everything from archaeology to classical studies, and couldn't find anyone who supports your "theory."

I also have a bit of experience when it comes to epigraphy and paleography (I had professors whose specialties were these). Reading ancient greek and latin in modern editions of Euripides, Plato, Cicero, etc., is one thing. Working with ancient manuscripts and inscriptions involves a whole different level of analysis. And nowhere in any of your work do I see any coherent analyses of the issues involved, from lexicographic, stylistic, linguistic, and so on, of the pre-4th century papyri and epigraphy you dismiss.

Can you read greek or latin? What training have you had in paleography, papyrology, epigraphy, or archaeology? Because if you are the Pete Brown behind the mountainman.com site you link to, then not only do you have no background whatsoever in ancient history, Greek, Latin, archaeology, classics, biblical studies, etc., your one area of study is in math and physics. I use multivariate statistics, boolean algebra, combinatorics, multivariate calculus, in the research I do all the time, so if you want to discuss mathematics, then perhaps we can actually engage in a fruitful conversation. However, if you insist on dismissing every specialists working with texts in lanugages you can't read based on a lack of knowledge of the field, then no such conversation is possible.

Your entire argument amounts to ignoring inconvenient evidence, refuting accepted dates without basis, and wild conclusions about how X isn't actually evidence of christianty.

You've linked to a post espousing perhaps the most astoundingly illogical, unbelievably ludicrous argument I've yet to come across. Apparently, as far as you are concerned (or your link) the entire NT can be considered non-christian because it replaces Jesus Christ with JC. And while this is somehow supposed to be evidence for something, you discount every specialist whose work is or is related to archaeology. We aren't even dealing with NT/Biblical studies anymore. We're talking about specialists who were trained in classics, epigraphy, archaeology, etc, rather than seminaries. Yet somehow they all fail to grasp what you have discovered.

DCHindley

Interpreted, this means "sources I agree with."

DCH