Zaphod

What evidence is there for the HJ? Are you saying that the Testimonium is as "conclusive" as the silence, lack of artifact, etc?

Yes, there are two sides to the issue, but they seem very disproportionate to me. Why is agnosticism a proper default position under such circumstances?

gurugeorge

No, any reconstruction that explains the existence of Christian writings and Christian religion that's consistent with the evidence (writings, archaeology - but also consistent with the whole of science, including other history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, neurology, etc.) is also a reasonable position.

Historicism and mythicism are both reasonable positions - both can be supported by and seen to be consistent with the evidence.

What's not rationally ok is certainty about any of these positive positions - because although there is a ton of evidence, it's kind of ambiguous at key points, and various positions can be reasonably sustained, yet doubts are still possible about any of those positions. Hence agnosticism, too, is a reasonable position under the circumstances.

Agnosticism under these circumstances means, "well it might be like this - or like so - but we just don't have enough evidence to be certain beyond any reasonable doubt".

judge

I dont think its impossible at all to imagine their NT didnt reflect their scriptural tradition. Religious people come up with all manner of wacky interpretations.
I just think it is simpler to look at our earliest texts. So I dont suggest we follow any EFC, just look at our earliest texts.

Also were there always patripassians. Wiki (which can be awful) suggests they began in the 3rd century.
Is there earlier evidence?

stephan huller

Crash course on the Patristic writings. Whenever heretics are mentioned our Catholic sources give us dates which have nothing to do with reality. They are just reflections of reality. So when scholars THINK they are dating heresies what they are really doing is dating the REFLECTION not the original thing.

So there's this guy named Polycarp. Who knows who the fuck he was. But we have this notion from Irenaeus that he came to Rome during the time of Anicetus (c. 150 CE). Irenaeus tells us that Polycarp rejected 'Marcion' at Rome so THEREFORE these genius date Marcion to 150 CE. There are a whole lot of other reasons to date Marcion much earlier (Clement of Alexandria's testimony stands out but there are others). But because Irenaeus is like a 'friend' it's like having some guy you admire tell you that there is this great vacation spot in the Caribbean 'you have to go to.' You've never been there but since your some asshole that likes to drop names and place names to impress people you start passing off 'Negril' as 'the place to go.'

Soon the 'information' takes on a life of it own even though you have never actually been Negril.

I have already pointed out in another thread that there are peculiarities with this reference in Irenaeus. 'Marcion' speaks in the plural for one. The other is that Hegesippus doens't mention Marcion or Polycarp in his history of the Roman See. I think there is a way to resolve everything but you can't take the evidence prima facie. You can't just say that the Marcionites are dated only to 150 CE just because Irenaeus tells us a perplexing anecdote.

So onto the third century reference to the Patripassians and the Sabellians and the like.

There never was an actual sect called the Patripassians. It's just another one of these stupid names that the Church Fathers made up to demonize their opponents.

Whoever, whatever Jesus was there was an interpretation that he was the Father and that he was the Son. These interpretations likely existed side by side one another in the same cities where Christians lived from a very early period.

But the identification of those who said Jesus was the Father as a specific heretical sect associated with this or that name dates to the early third century.

To me at least identifying Jesus as the Father makes more sense owing to the fact that just from a logical point of view the functionality of Christianity is about the catechumen being adopted as sons. Since the agent is Jesus he and everyone after him who holds a leadership position in the Church (bishop, Patriarch etc) acts the part of a 'father' to the initiates.

Now if you assume that Jesus was a historical person then you can argue that that he was once like us and because adopted by the father at baptism. The problem is that you still need something or someone coming down from heaven to act the part of the 'father' to his 'son' which takes us back to the same situation among the heresies who identified Jesus as the Father - i.e. a heavenly man coming out of ogdoad for the purpose of perfecting humanity.

The father has to somehow come down from 'there' to 'here' to get the adoption process going. If Jesus was a guy like you and me saying the 'dove' is the father doesn't really get around any of the problems raised by the Church Fathers or Celsus against the idea of the Father being absent from heaven or nailed to a cross. It's just a shell game really.

Since we know that (a) the Marcionites assumed that Isu was a heavenly man who came to do the adoption and (b) that they went out of their way to point examples of Jesus denying and rebuking people who claimed that he was the Son of God it stands to reason that once again they have what must be considered to be the original system. It's neat, it's pure and it doesn't require a trinity or some dogma to distract our attention.

What the Church Fathers who wrote anti-heretical treatises (note that the Alexandrian tradition never published such a text until Athanasius) is basically to attack every manifestation of belief that contradicted whatever was considered 'right thinking' at the time. So in one report they attack the belief that the Jewish God was imperfect, in another that the Jewish prophets didn't have perfect knowledge then in another that the god of the Christians was other than the god who established the covenant with Israel, then in another report that Jesus was the Father but it is plain to see that when you really think of it a lot of this is really related material.

If I deny that the Jesus was the Creator AND it is held as the official position of the Catholic Church that the world was created by the Word and the Word was the Son then it is possible and indeed likely that the same group might have been convicted twice for the same crime - i.e. (a) for not believing that Jesus was the Creator and (b) wrongly holding that the Jesus was the Father.

The reports of the Church Fathers are a lot like the writings of psychoanalytic literature and psychology in general. They just keep creating names to describe 'symptoms' (see Tertullian's title Prescription against the Heresies) which are often related and likely come from the same source.

Steve Weiss

It would be useful to identify what constitutes reliable evidence in general and then apply that standard to the boldness of the factual claims that are being asserted. The more outlandish and unlikely the claim the greater the evidentiary requirements in quality and amount. In the case of verifying miracles, virgin births, resurrections, etc. no amount of evidence will suffice for verifying such claims. The very idea of evidence of the laws of nature being suspended negates the concept of evidence as such. So, there is no justification for being agnostic about the lack of a case being made for the existence of an historical biblical Jesus. It is impossible to hold to the requirements of evidence within natural law and at the same time contradict the laws upon which facts depend. Miracles are not to be proved or disproved, they are mere arbitrary beliefs outside the rules of evidence. One may trace the origins of mythology for academic enlightenment, but miracles don't happen.

Doug Shaver

If you have to ask, then I have to tell you what I mean by "evidence." What I mean is that a fact or set of facts E is evidence for a proposition P if, to some degree of probability, the obtaining of E is inconsistent with a denial of P. Alternatively, P provides a plausible explanation for its being the case that E.

With that in mind, I offer as evidence various documents, apparently written during the second century, attesting to the belief of at least some Christians of that time that their religion had been founded by one Jesus of Nazareth, the central character of four of those writings now commonly referred to as the canonical gospels. One possible explanation for the existence of those documents is that Christianity actually was founded by either that person or certain of his followers.

Why do you ask that? I have not said the first word in this thread about the Testimonium.

gurugeorge

Yes, this is all valid to a degree (although I wouldn't be quite so formal about it - it's logically possible that it's just our understanding of the laws of nature that are awry, and that a "supernatural" event, evidenced strongly enough - e.g. Jesus coming down to Times Square in "The Day The Earth Stood Still" style, and multiplying loaves and fishes, etc., etc., in front of the assembled new agencies of the world, would be good reason to see if our understanding of what is "natural" was perhaps wrong).

But, putting that aside, most people nowadays, when they talk about a "historical Jesus" aren't talking about the biblical Jesus, they're talking about a human being who might have served as a starting-point for that biblical figure - i.e. most people are taking an euhemerist stance on the Jesus myth.

I think it's that figure that Stephan is wondering whether we should be agnostic about.

I mean, at first glance, euhemerism is a viable idea - it's quite plausible that some preacher or revolutionary, etc., etc., lived roundabout that time, and was crucified, and his followers then blew his story out of all proportion.

But the trouble is, even for that perfectly ordinary, human, putatively historical figure, there doesn't seem to be any knock-down evidence - neither outside the cult texts of Christianity, nor even internally, to be teased out of the texts themselves. All the purported "evidence" (the NT Canon) is for the mythical, biblical entity, but the evidentiary quality of that large quantity of texts doesn't easily translate across to its being evidence for a human being.

On the other hand, he can't be ruled out entirely - some of the evidence could be interpreted that way, if you squint at it right. And at the end of the day, there just might have been a human Jesus but for one reason or another we just don't happen to have much solid evidence for him.

Other alternatives like mythicism are more or less in the same boat - the extant evidence can support them, but none of it really makes mythicism a done deal.

And that's why the argument continues to rage on these boards.

(I think a lot depends on what one's background assumptions are. The more one is aware of how religions in general develop, of the psychology of religion and mysticism, of the surrounding cultures and mythologies, etc. etc., the more it seems that mythicism-all-the-way-down for the Jesus myth is reasonable - but one can't be certain, there's still room for doubt.)

Zaphod

As far as I can tell, the Testimonium is the closest thing there is to an independent attestation to, and best available evidence for, the historicity of JC. I may be wrong about this.

The T.F. is pretty weak tea vs the evidence against the HJ, so much so, it seems to me, that intellectual rigor would mandate agnosticism untenable.

Seriously, as an outsider to Biblical studies, I am rather amazed that the idea of agnosticism on the subject is tolerated, even embraced by the community. In scientific circles, hypotheses of this sort are considered failed pretty quickly.

You understand that I am not saying that the HJ is disproved, but rather that the proper default position must be that the HJ hypothesis is failed, and that agnosticism on the subject - the idea that we do not know enough and can not know enough to come to a proper conclusion - is not warranted.

spin

Having dealt with this material for many years, I have never seen any tangible evidence against the existence of Jesus. I've seen lots of suggestions and lots of scenarios and lots of desires, but "evidence against" Jesus? That you say that there is such evidence against him doesn't seem to me to be in touch with reality.

The strongest one can say is that there is almost no evidence for Jesus. He is perhaps as historical as Robin Hood. Was Robin Hood a real person? When William Langland mentioned him in his Piers Plowman in the context of a rel person, should we take that as evidence in Favor of Robin Hood? We simply cannot get close enough to the time of Robin Hood to make a serious evaluation. This seems to be the case with Jesus as well.

The HJ hypothesis has not failed. That would require evidence to the contrary, but no such evidence exists. Supporters simply haven't shown the validity of the position. You cannot equate lack of evidence with failure, otherwise you'd have to say that the anti-HJ people have failed. That would leave you in a rather awkward position with both pro and anti having failed.


spin

stephan huller

Indeed. Even with my interest in the Marcionites I refrain from saying that the Marcionite belief in Isu as a heavenly hypostasis 'proves' that Jesus wasn't a human being. Even within other religious traditions where we strongly suspect we are dealing with a historical figure (Moses, Mohammed) there are fantastic traditions that emerge which argue that the individual has supernatural characteristics. The early ghulat (from ghuluww Arabic: غلو‎ = exaggeration) within Islam made even Mohammed's urine have magical characteristics. The Alawites ('Alawīyyah Arabic: علوية‎ = 'those of Ali') to this day identify his older cousin Ali as a divine hypostasis. Does this argue against the historical existence Ali? I don't think so. Nevertheless we have to be careful when reconstructing Christian history. The exact identity of 'Jewish Christianity' has never been properly determined. I am not so sure that the earliest Christians identified Jesus as a son of Mary. The earliest document I can associate with this view is the hypomnemata associated with Hegesippus (c. 150 CE) and there are serious questions with this text.