KrisK10

Hi folks,

I would appreciate it if anyone could confirm or correct my understanding of three issues related to myth growth rates.

As some traditional scholars are glad to point out, one respected classical historian, A.N. Sherwin-White, affirms a basic historicity in most or all of the gospel traditions based on his experience with other ancient literature which is summed up in his statement: “even two generations are too short a span to allow the mythical tendency to prevail over the hard historical core of the oral tradition” (Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, pg. 190). However, this idea was questioned at the time (1963) by another classical historian, which prompted the following clarification from Sherwin-White:

“Mr. P.A. Brunt has suggested in private correspondence that a study of the Alexander sources is less encouraging for my thesis. There was a remarkable growth of myth around his person and deeds within the lifetime of contemporaries, and the historical embroidery was often deliberate. But the hard core still remains, and an alternative but neglected source – or pair of sources – survived for the serious inquirer Arrian to utilize in the second century A.D. This seems to me encouraging rather than the reverse.” (pg. 193)

Sherwin-White seems to be admitting here that determining the historical core from the highly legendized records of Alexander the Great would have proven difficult or impossible if not for the survival of the less legendized sources to guide the historian. Although he is right to say that his convention of historical inquiry still holds true in this case, its meaning seems different than what many people may think. Given Sherwin-White’s clarification, his convention of historical inquiry is really saying this:

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.

So my first question for anybody is: Am I understanding the implications of S-W’s convention of historical inquiry correctly?


If I am correct in my understanding the implications of S-W’s convention of historical inquiry, then it seems to me that if there ever was an exception to it, it would be in a case like that of the Christian literature for one reason. Unlike Alexander the Great and most other people of interest to historians, Jesus was not seen as a figure of great historical significance by those in his time that did not believe he resurrected (sorry mythical Jesus types, I’m assuming here that there was a JC). Because of this, it is unlikely that these people would have written anything about Jesus. Even if they did, such writings would have been miniscule compared to the volume of writings from those who worshipped him. Such miniscule writings could easily be lost to the effects of time or to the competitive battle of theologies. In this case, we would be left with just the highly legendized pieces of literature. If true, then the Christian literature is an exception to the bodies of literature that historians normally deal with.

So my second question is: Am I understanding this correctly? Is the position of skeptical scholarship (at least those who think Jesus lived) that the less legendized literary records of Jesus were either never produced or have been lost because of the unique situation that Jesus was legendized by his followers but did not have historical significance until much later? If I got that right, can anyone point me to a scholarly source that says this?



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 )


My third and final question is: Don’t the legends surrounding Alexander the Great that Sherwin-White mentions above meet this challenge? If not, why not? If so, why hasn’t anyone answered the challenge with this example?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer!

Kris

Toto

We haven't had a lot about the venerable Sherwin-White recently, but there have been extensive discussions in years past:

The anti-legend argument and links cited therein.

I don't know of any real historian who takes Sherwin-White's "convention of historical inquiry" at all seriously, so I am not sure what you want to understand.

The position of skeptical scholarship, among those who think that Jesus was a historical person, is that there were no "less legendized" literary records. There was only oral tradition and the memory of Jesus in his followers, which is lost but which inspired them to do the things that got the Christian Church established.

Mr. Muller apparently failed to offer a million dollars to anyone who could meet his challenge. :Cheeky: This is the first I have heard of it - you might check the first link that I gave you for examples of quickly developing legends.

ETA - the legendary development argument depends on dating the first gospel as early as possible, to before 70 CE. But we have no actual proof that the gospel of Mark was written that early - we have no actual evidence of it before the second century. And we don't know that it was considered to be "history" when it was written, so there might have been no reason for anyone to stand up and point out now inaccurate it was. Craig's argument is entirely consistent with the gospel of Mark being written in the second century, and set in the previous century at a time and place that were so legendary that its readers would have no reason to challenge its accuracy.

Malachi151

Its a bunch of nonsense. There is no defined or predictable "rate". Misinformation is misinformation. All it takes is two seconds for misinformation to overtake facts. If Jesus never existed, how would people in Rome who heard stories about some guy named Jesus, even if current stories, i.e. even if they said, "There is a guy in Jerusalem right now raising people from the dead," would they be able to determine that this were not true? I mean even today many people believe things that are provably not true about things that are supposedly happening right now.

Its all a nonsense attempt and trying to dismiss arguments out of hand against historicity of both Jesus and of specific Gospel events, but such an attempt has zero merit.

KrisK10

Toto & Malachai

Thanks for comments. I got to say though that the archive of discussion on this topic is pretty poor. Almost nobody had actaully read the 8 pertinent pages from Sherwin-White's book. His focus was not really on legendary growth rate, but on historical erasure rate (bad title for the thread on my part). In other words, even in those cases where there was rapid legend like with Elvis, JFK, etc, lots of hisotircal core still survived. What folks from Strauss to the Jesus Seminar have proposed is that there is massive legend in the gospels and that almost no hisotrical core has survived. S-W, who appears to me to have been a respected classical historian. is simply saying that this would be a first for him in his study of ancient literature. As I said in my first post, P.A. Brunt challenged him with what I presume was his best example (the Alexander the Great literature) and S-W just rightly pointed out that the historical core survived in other sources. So S-W's view that the historical core is usually pressent in the first 2 or 3 generations literary record (a generation is 30-35 years, so this would apply to NT writings into the second century which includes a post 70 dating of Mark) seems pretty sound. I'll bet you can't find a classical historian that says much against it. My point was that no matter how you cut it, the Christian literaure seems to be an exception to the amount of historical core that is usually found in ancient sources. From there, I'm merely proposing that there is a good explanation for the Christian literature being an exception -- Jesus was not historically significant in the century after his death to anyone except those who thought he resurrected, therefore, nobody but them would write about him. This explains why we don't have less legendary records of Jesus as we do for Alexander the Great (who was historically significant in his lifetime and immediately after). This conclusion merely matches what you said about the current skeptical scholarship position -- nothing was written about Jesus by those who just saw him as an unfortunate victim of Roman justice. Perhaps we are just going in circles here, but I think it is the wrong tack to take to say that S-W's convention of historical inquiry is incorrect or not taken seriously by historians today. More accurate I think is that Christian literature is an exception to S-W's rule for a good reason. I was just testing the waters to see if anyone else saw it that way.

Still would like to hear someone agree with me that the Alexander the Great literaure answers Muller's challenge at the end of my first post. And if anyone does agree with me on this, why has traditional scholarship been able to toot their horn with this challenge since at least 1981 without anyone answering it?

Kris

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.

Steven Carr

Nope.


He confined his discussion to the trial of Jesus.

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

Steven Carr

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

Perhaps they are in the claims that the disciples stole the body :-) See, the historical core always survives in other sources :-)

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

I'll see you a Sherwin-White, and raise you a Paul, who knew perfectly well that legends arose rapidly.

Now all you have to do is show that the 'historical core' survived in the 'other sources' (Paul, Hebrews, James, Revelation, 1 Peter etc)

Steven Carr

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?

Ben C Smith

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.

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

Ben.

Steven Carr

According to Paul, the only thing he preached was Christ crucified.

So any other Jesus that was preached, was not Christ crucified.

In Galatians, there is a hint that they are drifting away from a belief in Christ crucified, and Paul has to remind them that they were taught that Christ was crucified.