ApostateAbe

gurugeorge wrote something thoughtful in another thread, and I would like to share it.
This is an argument from silence. That has a negative connotation, but, really, arguments from silence are not always faulty (I sometimes use them myself). They are generally pitfalls only becaure there are limitations to arguments from silence in ancient history, and these limitations are easy to overlook. I have formulated a set of points by which we can judge an argument from silence.

1. An author would mention a point only if he knew about it.
2. An author would mention a point only if it were in his interest to do so.
3. We would know about such writings only if the evidence is preserved. In ancient history, written text may be preserved through quoting, scribing in stone, burying, many generations of copying, or a combination of these methods.
4. We would know about such writings only if they are known to modern scholarship.

If we strongly expect all four of these conditions to be met (but there is still only silence), then an argument from silence has weight, Otherwise, such an argument contributes very little to the conclusion, in my opinion.

Arguments from silence need to put in a further perspective that literacy was rare in the ancient world. Only 15% of Greeks at the time could read, let alone write, and writing was an expensive activity. It was typically an activity that was hired. There were no newspapers, only the ruling class wrote letters, and nobody scribble notes of things they saw.

So, on which point do we take issue with the argument from non-Christian contemporary silence about Jesus? The first three points apply most strongly. The third point explains why we today have only one contemporary historian that we expect may mention Jesus; only one of them--Philo of Alexandria. And, the first two points may explain why Philo never mentioned Jesus. If Jesus really was an ordinary human being called Jesus, then why would we expect Philo to have heard about him, let alone write about him? Philo, when he wasn't writing about the ancient Jewish traditions, focused almost exclusively on the events of the upper class.

There was another historical figure analogous to Jesus whom Philo was also completely silent about--John the Baptist. We know about John the Baptist through both the gospels and the writing of Josephus. And it is reasonable to expect that Josephus knew about John the Baptist and Jesus only because of the 70-year growth of the two cults emerging from those two figures, not from the notable accomplishments that were borne out in the lifetimes of either John the Baptist and Jesus. Philo probably knew about John the Baptist, in my opinion. So, why didn't Philo write about John the Baptist? Well, probably because Philo just didn't care, and John the Baptist didn't have much to do with what Philo was writing about.

aa5874

It is the HJ argument that is COMPLETELY from Silence.

It can be SHOWN.

1. In the NT, Jesus had NO human father.

2. In the NT, Jesus was described as the Child of a GHOST and a Virgin.

3. In the NT Jesus ACTED like a GHOST when he walked on water, transfigured, RAISED from the dead and Ascended through the Clouds.

There is ABSOLUTE SILENCE on Jesus the man in the NT.

The "historical Jesus" , a human Jesus, is an argument from SILENCE. There is ZERO credible historical sources of antiquity for HJ.

Doug Shaver

There were quite a few people, in Judea and several other places throughout the Near East, making some extraordinary claims about this ordinary human being. Among those claims was one about his having been the messiah foretold in Jewish prophecy -- that he was crucified and resurrected in fulfillment of Jewish prophecy.

Philo was a Jew.

Now, please explain why Philo either never heard anything about this man or, having heard about him, had no interest in writing about him.

Steven Carr

Paul says 'How can they believe in the one they have never heard of? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?'

Paul is scornful of the idea that Jews had heard of Jesus without Christians being sent to preach about him.

Why had so many Jews in Jerusalem not converted to this new righteousness to which the Law and the Prophets had testified?

Because Jews in Jerusalem had never heard of Jesus, or rejected Christian preaching about him.

Steven Carr

Paul was a member of the ruling class?

Mind you, there is lot of force in the fact that Paul would not write things in his letters that there was no need to write.

Paul explictly says this.

2 Corinthians 9 'There is no need for me to write to you about this service to the Lord’s people.'

Of course, Paul goes on to write about the very thing he said there was no need for him to write about.

'This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God. 13 Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.'

Why waste expensive paper telling people about the miracles ,teachings and deeds of Jesus when you could spend time telling people things they already knew, things that there was no need for Paul to write about?

gurugeorge

I think there's a subtle slippage going on here somewhere. This is not really about an argument from silence. I am not trying to prove that there wasn't a man behind the myth.

You have this stuff (myth, scribblings, religious tradition), you're trying to explain the existence of this stuff. To that end you have two hypotheses:-

1) man behind myth

2) myth all the way down.

It behooves the proposer of hypothesis 1) to look for a historical person outside the cult texts in question. Sure, there may be internal evidence, but that evidence only becomes evidence when the cult texts are connected to the world outside the cult. Till the man is found, we don't know whether those fleshly-sounding aspects are evidence of anything or not (other than evidence of beliefs).

If such a historical person can't be found, then for so long as that person is not evidenced, the hypothesis remains weak.

Another way of looking at it. What people then believed is certainly a question that has some intrinsic interest. But what the HJ-er needs is to show is what actually happened (i.e. that there was a man behind the myth).

It's only once that has been shown, i.e. that there was a man, that the human-sounding aspects in the mythical story (stripped of the supernatural elements) may crystallize as possible evidentiary tidbits of a real man's biography.

IOW, the "silence" I'm talking about pertains not to what people were saying or evidently believing, the "silence" is simply the lack of evidence of a man behind the myth.

Still another way of putting it: if you haven't been able to independently triangulate a man who could be the candidate for the man behind the Jesus myth, what on earth are you doing proposing that there was a man behind the myth at all?

Why, when there just simply is no evidence of such a man, is "man behind the myth" a compelling explanation of the existence of the cult, the scribblings, etc? Why does it seem to you the obvious first port of call for an explanation? Especially when we know as a background fact prior to any investigation of this type that: 1) people make stuff up, and 2) people have visionary experiences of talking to spiritual beings?

Since there is no evidence of a man, whatever gave you the idea of a man behind the myth? I submit, it's simply the Christian tradition, plus an attempt in the 18th and 19th centuries, to save that tradition when the rise of rationalism made belief in a supernatural superhero untenable. Then the idea was that if you stripped away the supernatural stuff, what you were left with might be the biography of a wise man worth affiliating with.

But that simply does not follow. It does not follow. It does not follow.

ApostateAbe

I am sorry I misunderstood your argument--I sorta took the ball and ran down the field the wrong direction. Well, this thread still serves as a presentation of my theory of arguments from silence.

So, to be clear, my model is not really about accepting the Jesus in the gospels and stripping out the supernatural stuff. There are some normal and natural stuff in the gospels that we shouldn't believe, either. It is more like accepting the gospels as evidence for what early Christians believed and finding the best explanations for that belief. If merely-mythical Jesus is the best explanation, then that is what we accept. If an actual-human Jesus is the best explanation, then that is what we accept. I think that the actual-human Jesus is the best explanation, largely because the contents of the myths are such that we would much more strongly expect from a human-turned-myth cult founder, not from a merely-myth cult founder. To illustrate, there doesn't seem to be any clear examples of merely-myth cult founders in history, so that would be a point of plausibility, in my opinion.

You were actually making a point about the character Jesus emerging from only a single source and being unable to triangulate. OK. Since, as I said, ancient historical sources about anything are very scarce, I think you may be implicitly giving too much weight to the a priori assumption that merely-mythical is more likely than historical. We have a bunch incredible myths based actual human beings and a bunch of other incredible myths based on merely-mythical beings, so I don't think we should have a prima facie presumption that myth and silence lends more weight to the conclusion of completely myth. The specific contents of the myths, of course, would lend the most weight to one side or the other, and that is all that really matters. We should be thinking: here is the evidence, so what is the best explanation for it?

ApostateAbe

Philo lived and wrote about the same time as Jesus. Josephus attests that there were a bunch of such people claiming to be inspired by God, telling lies and stirring up trouble, and Josephus didn't name them. I don't think Jesus would have stood out too much from those figures at the time. Philo apparently doesn't care. Why should he? He never mentions John the Baptist. Why would Jesus seem more important? His concerns are almost entirely the dramas of politics, like almost all other historians.

Toto

In the case of any other legendary figure who might or might not have a historical basis, you will find that historians are content to just say that the personage might be historical or might not, and leave it at that.

If the evidence is inconclusive, why is there a need to draw a conclusion? Why go on to disparage anyone who draws a slightly different conclusion?

Why announce that your conclusion has to be the best explanation of the evidence, and other conclusions are fringe theories, especially when you have only a superficial understanding of the whole area of study??

And when is your spring break going to be over?

aa5874

But, you have COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN about what "Paul" wrote and PREACHED all over the Roman Empire during the time of Philo .

"Paul" was NOT claiming Jesus was a FALSE prophet, a liar and stirring up trouble.

"Paul" the Hebrew of Hebrews and a PHARISEE made JESUS, a DEAD JEW, the most SIGNIFICANT character in the Roman Empire, claiming that Jesus was God's OWN Son, the END of the Law, the LORD, the Messiah, the Saviour, who had a name above EVERY name, A NAME ABOVE the DEIFIED EMPERORS of Rome, and that EVERY knee should BOW before the resurrected dead JEWISH man, and that the very dead JEWISH man had the ABILITY to REMIT the Sins of mankind.

Not even the DEIFIED EMPERORS of Rome could REMIT the Sins of Mankind, yet a dead resurrected JEW was being promoted as a Savior of even the Emperors of Rome.

How could PHILO miss such a JEWISH character as PREACHED by "Paul"?

How could Josephus NOT write about Jesus the END of the LAW who supposedly ACCURATELY PREDICTED the Fall of the Temple based on the Gospels.

Instead Josephus wrote about another Jesus, one called Jesus son of Ananus, whom he thought accurately predicted the calamities of the Jews during the War of the Wars.

The SILENCE from Philo and Josephus about the Pauline Jesus is DEAFENING.

The resurrected dead JEWISH man and "PAUL" the PHARISEE should have ROCKED the 1st century world unless people's ears were made of ROCKS or there was NO SOUND.

How did a supposedly dead Jewish man become the most SIGNIFICANT character in the Roman Empire and Philo wrote NOTHING?

Philo, Josephus, Jesus and "Paul" were supposed to be JEWS after all.