Family Man

BGIC is having difficulty understanding how much of the gospels are mythic in nature. For purposes of this thread, myth is defined as:

Any read of scholars dealing with the historical aspects of the gospels will tell you that the evidence for any aspect of Jesus's career is considered poor indeed. And, in fact, they readily concede that most of the gospels are more myth than historical fact. What I hope to do in this thread is to demonstrate the difficulties in treating the gospels are history instead of myth. That is not to say that there is no history in the gospels. This is definitely not a Jesus Myth thread. But neither is it wholly history.

For starters, consider what Michael Grant, a professor who wrote extensively on ancient history, had to say about the gospels in his book about the historical Jesus:

Or as A.N. Wilson pointed out:

Let's consider some of the questions historians ask when deciding how much weight to give to a report in an ancient document.

1. How close to the actual events were the reports made?

The gospels, by the standard analysis, were written from 40-60 years after the event. By comparison, as E.P. Sanders pointed out, the great Roman leaders were quite famous in their lifetimes and they were frequently written about by their contempories. For example, in the case of Jesus's near-contemporary, Julius Caesar, we have his eight-volume commentary on the Gallic Wars and the letters and speeches of Cicero.

Please note that, by itself, the lack of contemporary writings about Jesus does not invalidate the claims made about him. After all, we have no contemporary records of Alexander the Great either. However, this is a consideration.

2. Are there independent sources for the events being described?

Note that independent sources are more than just more than one person making the report. It is also important that the sources represent different viewpoints. For example, Caesar and Cicero were bitter enemies. Either would have been glad for the other to disappear. Thus, if one says "I did this" and the other says "Yep, he did do that", we can feel confident that the event happened as described.

We don't have that with our Christian sources. Not only the common view that Matthew and Luke copied much of their material from Mark, but that Christians very likely were working off of common sources even if they weren't directly borrowing from each other. Michael Grant makes this point when he criticizes the use of "multiple attestation" by some scholars:

Again the lack of independence is not necessarily fatal to the claim that the event happened. But the lack of independence doesn't help the notion that the gospels are primarily recording historical events.

3. Is there archealogical evidence to support the claim?

In 51 B.C., Caesar engaged and captured the Gallic forces under Vercingetorix at Alesia. During the siege, Caesar reports in his commentaries that his forces dug pits, put sharpened sticks in them, then covered them with brush. Recently, archealogists unearthed some of these pits, confirming both what Caesar wrote in his commentaries and the battle itself.

There is no such archealogical evidence for the Resurrection, or for any event of Jesus's life. The best that apologists can do is to point to places that are mentioned in the Bible, such as the pool of Bethesda, and note that the information given is accurate. However, that does little to indicate that any event described in the Bible actually occurred. As Raymond Brown noted:

To put it clearly, to claim that archealogy "confirms" the events of the Bible is like saying that the historical fact that the Union Army burned Atlanta confirms the romance of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara. It doesn't.

4. What do we know of the authors?

Ancient writers such as Plutarch and Suetonius were well-known during their lifetimes, and developed a reputation for writing biographies that, while not perfect, were close to the facts as we know them. The gospel writers, on the other hand, were anonymous. As E.P. Sanders says:

5. What were the motivations of the authors?

The importance of this cannot be understated. It is not uncommon for historians to discount claims based on the potential bias of the reporter. Here is Michael Grant dismissing various claims made by Caesar:

We have a similar problem with the gospel authors. Were their beliefs the result of a real resurrection, or did the stories of the resurrection come about to justify the beliefs of the writers? No one questions the sincerity of the authors, but that doesn't mean they didn't embellish their stories. And, in fact, that's exactly what they did. Consider the birth narratives or the passion stories, for instance.


6. How honest and objective were the authors?

This is a major failing of many ancient writers, but a particular failing of the gospel writers. As E.P. Sanders says:

What Sanders is saying here is that the early Christians were not writing down events that actually happened, but invented material they thought must be true given their beliefs. For example, if Jesus was Lord then he must have had a miraculous birth. Scholars widely consider the birth narratives to be fabrications. They are contradictory, contain historical absurdities (people did not have to go to ancestral backgrounds to pay taxes), contain events that likely would have been reported in other accounts (the massacre of the babes), and contain fantastic elements (warnings from angels, stars guiding wise men). No serious historian would take such stories seriously.

And that is just one example, with the end result being that the accuracy of the whole has to be called into question. The question becomes, if they were willing to assume a fantastic birth, why not invent a fantastic life and a fantastic death to go along with it? The possiblity cannot be discounted.

7. Does the tale involve fantastic elements?

History is the study of human events. During the course of those events, there have been many claims of the supernatural. What you will never find is a claim that a supernatural event is a historical event.

For example, when Caesar defeated Pompeii, it was reported that a large statue at a local temple turned around, greatly impressing the locals. You won't find very many people claiming that that actually happened, at least not by supernatural means. In fact, outside of the claims of religion, I've never seen a single instance of a supernatural event being widely held as being true.

The great problem with many of the stories of the gospels are that they the ultimate supernatural events. Nor is it unusual for such stories to be made up. Several witnesses signed affadavits that they had seen the golden plates that the archangel Moroni had pointed Joseph Smith to. Outside of the Mormon Church, however, there aren't too many people who accept their claims at face value. Neither can we take the claims in the Bible seriously either. Not about supernatural claims.

What ought to be clear from the above discussion is that the claim that the gospel is recording history and not myth is simply a piece of absurd propaganda, one that does a disservice to the religion it is intended to bolster. The gospels are primarily recording myths, not history as modern scholars know it.

GakuseiDon

E.P. Sanders sketches out a 4 stage process of: individual units of Jesus sayings are passed on as oral teachings; the units get collected as pericopes; the pericopes are gathered together to form proto-gospels dealing with particular issues; the proto-gospels form to become the Gospels that we know. He states that the original context that inspired a particular saying or action has probably been lost. Still, he seems clear that many of the pericopes are based on historical events. They do not fit the definitions of "myth" as you give them in the OP, given that they are based on actual sayings or events.

That's not to say that there aren't myths in the Gospels - I think the virgin birth fits the bill. But most of the Gospels couldn't be classified as myths.

GakuseiDon

Sure you have. How about Uri Geller bending spoons? Personally I think that he is an amateur magician using stage magic, but for a time in the 1970s his powers were widely held as being real, esp after he was tested and validated by a couple of Nobel prize winning scientists.

Family Man

He dismisses far more than you're giving him credit for. Remember, he talked about having to work with bits and pieces, not a biography in the traditional sense of the term. What is usually attributed to him are the parables and stories he told -- not events. For example, he completely dismisses the walking on water episode. There is very little that we would recognize as the divine Christ that Sanders -- or anyone working in the critical-historical method -- accepts as being historical. And that indicates myth, not history.

Family Man

Uri Geller bending spoons is not widely considered a supernatural power, and wasn't in the 1970s either -- except among the gullible.

Vorkosigan

Great presentation, Family Man.

I wonder how many pericopes we'd eliminate on the basis of supernatural powers alone, if we actually counted. I think I'll count.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Just for the Eff of it, I made a quick chart using the NIV, which divides Mark in 73 pericopes by my count (although some counts come in at over 100. I don't think I missed any....)

25 out of 73 I labeled supernatural, using any healing. Arguably some might be. For example, I counted the second half of Jesus blasting the Fig tree as supernatural, but the first half as merely a statement of Jesus. Another kind of supernatural is prophecy fulfillment, for example, in mark 1, where John is presented as one who will play the harbinger of Jesus. I plausibly could have counted that, but did not. It is actually more difficult than you might think to determine what is supernatural and what is not.

My chart, still in draft, is up at here. I intend to use it for a review of every pericope's historicity eventually.

Vorkosigan

GakuseiDon

You seem to be reading a different Sanders. In his "Historic Figure of Jesus", in the first couple of chapters of Ch 10 called "Miracles", Sanders explicitly states he is looking at it from the viewpoint of the people of the time, who regarded the miracles as "striking and significant". He also believes that the "sheer volume of evidence makes it extremely likely that Jesus actually had a reputation as an exorcist".

If that is the case, then it would be hard to classify the exorcism pericopes as "myth". Similarly with stories of Jesus's miraculous healing stories. When, say, Benny Hinn performs miracle cures, they can't be classified as "myths" as per the definitions in your OP. In the same way, how would you decide that a particular pericope was a myth instead of an actual historical report?

GakuseiDon

Then I'm afraid I don't understand your point under "Does the tale involve fantastic elements".

Vorkosigan

It's not as simple as that. The pericopes involving Jesus' miraculous powers are taken from the OT, and do not appear to have any historical basis. Crossan indeed regarded his methodology as having only weak evidence that Jesus ever worked miracles, so he disregarded it (point being that rigorous methodology, even without OT foundation, yields the same result as noting that miracles come from OT). Have you read Helms' Gospel Fictions yet? The case for drawing from the OT is laid out there.

What Sanders refers to as "sheer volume" is apparently creativity. Simply put, there is no good evidence that Jesus was ever thought of as a miracle worker prior to the writing of Mark.

Vorkosigan