Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Amaleq13 · 06-05-2008, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

I don't know if they're serious or not, but I presume they are.

Well, the "Matrixism" folks apparently are serious so I suppose the "Jedi" folks could be as well.

The willingness of people to believe ridiculous claims if that belief makes them feel good is easily underestimated. I can't decide if it is more depressing or amusing, though.

Solo · 06-05-2008, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amaleq13

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

I don't know if they're serious or not, but I presume they are.

Well, the "Matrixism" folks apparently are serious so I suppose the "Jedi" folks could be as well.

The willingness of people to believe ridiculous claims if that belief makes them feel good is easily underestimated. I can't decide if it is more depressing or amusing, though.

There is always Prozac if Bokononism does not help !

Jiri

Vinny · 06-05-2008, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Hi Vinny - welcome to BC&H.

I think that it is clear that apologists have abused Sherwin-White, but I think that most of the skeptics here disagree with his idea that the gospels can be used to do history in any meaningful sense.

Sherwin-White is usually cited for the proposition that there was not enough time for "legendary development," and therefore there is some historical core to the gospels. KrisK10 claims that Sherwin-White actually proposed that

If there are literary records where the mythical tendency has prevailed over the hard historical core of the oral tradition in the first two generations, there will always survive another less legendized source or sources to guide the later historian.

I don't have the book in front of me, but I doubt that this proposition can be supported, since the survival of historical documents can be somewhat random. :huh:

I'm not sure that even Sherwin-White would have defended the idea all that vigorously. I don't think that he was claiming to have developed any sort of well researched thesis. I doubt that he thought he was doing anything more than offering a few thoughts off the top of his head to justify the attention he had given to examining the the procedural questions related to Jesus' trial and Paul's citizenship.

Malachi151 · 06-05-2008, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solo

But you see, Malachi, this is a naive view of how information spreads. Irrespective whether Jesus existed or not, if some fantastic tales about him appeared, say in Alexandria and Syria, they would spread horizontally as well as vertically. If there was a bunch of illiterate folks who spread the "news" of Jesus they would (and did, in fact) hit the literate echelons of the Jewish community, i.e. people who either were well educated or who thought themselves well educated. For example, Philo and Paul. Philo would have likely considered these tales "a [small coin] a dozen" that did not merit his attention. Paul, on the other hand, having some pretensions of his own to know God's mind, pretensons not terribly well schooled, would be very offended by the tales of Jesus and - through whatever happened in his head to convert - he would begin the process of a historical record of the movement. So the spread of the misinformation would have been checked, at some point, either by the disinterested philosophical types, or by a competing theo-political agenda.

It is my view that the latter did occur in Paul, and if Paul - a fanatical devotee of God - did not say, "such man never walked on earth, so keep these crazies out of our midst", but preached instead a fantastic apologia for Jesus through an assumed connection to him post-mortem, then it is a significant statement on one side of the debate.

Jiri

Agreed. It means that there were no tales about Jesus during the time of Paul at all, once again evidence of for the mythicist argument.

KrisK10 · 06-05-2008, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

This might be of interest: Apologists abuse of Sherwin-White.

I don't think that Sherwin-White's "rule" is currently an accepted axiom of historical research, or that modern historians have much faith in any historical core of any writing.

Toto,

Thanks for that site, I ran into it myself a few months ago. He's got some good points in there, but I don't think Vinni has wrapped his arms completely around this thing. I'm not sure how S-W's rule, or something like it, is accepted amongst historians today. If I had to guess (which I think you are doing too) I'd say that it is a generally accepted rule (outside of those historians who are embroiled in the controversy surrounding the Christian literature). It would be nice if we could poll some classical historians.

Kris

KrisK10 · 06-05-2008, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Nope.

He confined his discussion to the trial of Jesus.

The bit that has fewer miracles than the other bits...

Steven,

S-W's treatise has lots of ambiguity to it, but in whole it is pretty clear to me that he thinks that there is a basic historicity to most of the gospel traditions. Perhaps this can be captured in his opinion that bias “do[es] not inevitably contradict the notion of the basic historicity of the particular stories of which the Gospel narratives are composed…” (pg. 188). Note too here that S-W is wording this very defensively. He is careful to separate his opinion from any "rule" that he lays down. He best clarifies the scope of his "rules" this way: “The point of my argument is not to suggest the literal accuracy of ancient sources, secular or ecclesiastical, but to offset the extreme scepticism with which the New Testament narratives are treated in some quarters” (pg. 193).

I do not personally think that the gospels have much history at all in them, but I'm trying to appreciate the perspective of someone who has spent a lifetime looking at a lot of ancient history and is trying to say that if the gospels are mostly legend, it is an exception to what he has normally looked at. I think the explanation is not to say that S-W is full of bunk, but rather to clearly explain why the Christian literature is plausibly an exception. My contribution in that vain is to suggest that the Christian literature is an exception because Jesus was not a historically significant figure in his lifetime or in the century or two after his death, and so it makes sense that only those who legendized him would write about him. That is why we have only the legendized records. Doesn't seem like anyone else sees it this way. Oh well.

Kris

KrisK10 · 06-05-2008, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Quote:

Originally Posted by KrisK10

This brings me to a “challenge” that is sometimes brought up by traditional scholars: “Julius Müller challenged scholars of the mid-nineteenth century to show anywhere in history where within thirty years a great series of legends had accumulated around a historical individual and had become firmly fixed in general belief. Müller's challenge has never been met.” (see http://www.apologetics.com/default.j...urrection.html )

When did the resurrection of Jesus become 'firmly fixed in general belief'?

After 325 AD, when Constantine made the Roman Empire Christian?

Certainly not within 30 years, as even Christians admit that Christianity was a minority in the 1st 30 years.

But please meet Muller's challenge and show that within 30 years of the virgin birth of Jesus, a belief in his virgin birth 'had become firmly fixed in general belief'.

BTW, had it become firmly fixed in general belief within 23 years that Muhammad had received the Koran from the Angel Gabriel?

Steven,

Great points about the "firmly fixed in general belief" phrase. I agree with all that you said and think that part of the challenge can be easily met. The main part of the challenge that is difficult IMHO is "a great series of legends". We're not looking for a tale or two here, but a whole bunch of real doosies (sp?) accumulating all around one person within 30 years (or even 70 years if one wishes) after his death. It seems to me the closest comparable example is the Alexander literaure; as S-W says: "There was a remarkable growth of myth around his person and deeds within the lifetime of contemporaries, and the historical embroidery was often deliberate" (pg. 193). My question to the group on this point was if anyone familiar with the ALexander literature thought the same way or perhaps had an even better example.

Kris

KrisK10 · 06-05-2008, 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ben C Smith

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

So where are are the *other* sources where the historical core about Jesus survived?

Josephus, Antiquities 20.9.1:

So he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others.

Tacitus, Annals 15.44:

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

Lucian, Passing of Peregrinus 11:

They regarded [Peregrinus] as a god and made use of him as a lawgiver and wrote him down as a protector, next after that other, to be sure, whom they still worship, the man who was crucified in Palestine because he brought this new cult to life.

Mara bar Serapion, letter:

Or [what benefit did] the Jews [recieve] by the murder of their wise king, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away from them? .... The Jews, brought to desolation and expelled from their kingdom, are driven away into every land. .... Nor yet [did] the wise king [truly die], because of the new laws which he enacted.

Quote:

As early as Paul, Paul was complaining about people teaching a different Jesus to the crucified Jesus that he taught.

He complains of a different Jesus, yes. Where does he complain that the difference was the crucifixion?

Ben.

Hi Ben,

That is the kind of minimal historical core that I think survived regarding Jesus, with the rest of it (90% or so) being legend. The question is, how does one explain this in relation to other ancient literature where, according to S-W, such massive legend and such small historical core does not seem to occur in records from the first two or three generations of an event? Why is the literature on Jesus an exception? My take is that the Christian literature is an exception because Jesus was not a historically significant figure in his lifetime or in the century or two after his death, and so it makes sense that only those who legendized him would write about him. That is why we have only the legendized records. Anyone agree/disagree? Anyone have any other factors that would explain the exception?

Kris

KrisK10 · 06-05-2008, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

That said, consider the following:
1. Star Wars is a known work of fiction. There exists a religion based off of it known as the Jedi Order.
2. Dianetics is a known work of fiction. There exists a religion based off of it known as Scientology.
3. The genre of Mark (generally argued to be the earliest gospel story) is contested among scholars.

Hi spamandham,

Could you pick just one of those, your best one, and explain what legends accumulated around what historical person within 30 (or 100) years of them living? (Assumed in Muller's challenge is that Jesus was a real person).

Kris

KrisK10 · 06-05-2008, 08:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malachi151

These arguments, I think, point in favor of the Jesus Myth argument. Sherwin-White's argument are geared toward arguing against "mythologized history", i.e. as you say, towards refuting the ideas of groups like the Jesus Seminar who are proposing that there was a historical core, but that core was overtaken by mythology to the loss of historical fact.....But now there is another problem for Sherwin-White's argument though. The other problem is that there was a massive and organized effort to "scrub" the Jesus story by the official church. This was never the case with other figures. So, that there could be differences in how information about Jesus was passed down vs. how information about other figures was passed down is to be expected because in no other case was there such an organized and large effort to frame the story and to create such "official" and "blasphemous" accounts.

Malachi,

Bingo! You understand my point. And I think the church scrubbing is another reason to explain why the Christian literature is an exception to the bodies of literature that classical historians are used to looking at. Thanx!

Kris

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