LegionOnomaMoi

Interesting that this is your reasoning despite the fact that you end your post with one of many biographies of actual, historical people about whom myths were told and written.

We have plenty of trial records of historical individuals from the 14th century onwards who were accused of being witches. The only documentation that they ever existed are these records, in which they are said to be allied with the devil and possess certain supernatural powers and/or abilities.

Now, if we follow your logic, then none of these people ever existed. We have no other evidence for their existence, and therefore unless one is willing to admit that the devil is real and magic is real, by your argument these people are fictional. Thousands of people (mainly women) whom we know only from such records, yet none existed. Almost the entirety of the period of European witchtrials is fictitious, as virtually all our evidence exists in records ascribing impossible feats and actions to individuals.

Alternatively, we can recognize that as much as we would like our evidence of the past to be well-documented by historians using modern methods whose work was carefully preserved by unbiased record keepers, we don't have that. Historical writings grew out of story-telling and myths, and until the modern era, such elements remained in our sources for the past.


No more than we should conclude that because Zeus is in our extant copies of the Homeric epics he is real. But we have statues of deities and statues of emperors. We have inscriptions which invoke gods and those which refer to real people. We have stories of mythic creatures and stories of actual people. We have fictional stories and plays which refer to real people, and forged letters whose authors pretend to be a known historical individual.

How does one seperate what is probably at least in part history and that which is almost certainly mythical when historians used and reported myth and myths (even the Iliad) contain historical elements? If we use your criterion (i.e., if the story contains myth, then it is myth) we have no ancient histories. We must throw out Plutarch, Caesar, Josephus, Herodotus, Diogenes Laertius, Livy, and virtually every single historian or chronicler we possess.


You seem to have missed what I was asking, unless of course you think there was no Alexander the Great. I was asking how many accounts like those told of Alexander the Great suddenly appeared but were about people who didn't exist. But you nicely illustrated my point here. Diodorus Siculus says that Alexander was descended from Heracles. Plutarch, who explicitly states he isn't writing history (οὔτε γὰρ ἱστορίας γράφομεν) agrees with Diodorus Siculous concerning Alexander's lineage. In fact, we don't have a single source about Alexander which says he wasn't descended from Heracles. They all say he was (they also have other mythic elements as well). By your logic, Alexander the Great didn't exist.

aa5874

What absurdity!!! You put put forward a most absurd notion that all stories about witches are about figures of history or that characters called witches must exist if they are mentioned.

Please, please, please!!! You seem to read too much Bible stories.


What a load of BS. VIRTUALLY Everything we read about Jesus is either fictional or implausible. Please examine the Gospels.

You are NOT credible. It is erroneous that all sources which mention Alexander claimed he descended from Heracles.

Plus, whether or not Alexander the Great did or did NOT exist requires a SEPARATE and Independent inquiry and the results of the inquiry has NO bearing whatsoever on the existence of Jesus.

Anyone can be wrong or right about the existence of any character of antiquity.

For example, some believe the God of the Jews exists but deny there are other Gods and others argue that Jesus had NO real existence but think Alexander the Great was a figure of history.

Steven Carr

So Legion takes contemporary evidence , the very sort that he cannot find for his Jesus.....

That makes him an official waste of time, as he is only interested in arguing.

GakuseiDon

:notworthy: LegionOnomaMoi has expressed this beautifully. Most historicists on this board I think have said something along these lines, but never this well. We can verify so little of the historical Jesus that any attempt of reconstruction from the texts is virtually impossible. He may as well not have existed, from the point that we can know with any certainty who Jesus was. And that is the same for most figures in history. But it is a separate question to actual historicity.

aa5874

What absurdity!!! What logical fallacy!!!

The Lochness monster must exist because we know very little about it.

What absolute fallacious nonsense.

You very well know that once the existence of a character is unknown that NO argument can be made for its unknown existence .

Please Gakuseidon, when did a UNKNOWN man exist in Galilee???

The amount of BS on this thread is out of control.

Toto

No one really cares about a historical Socrates. The Socrates of literature is enough for scholars to analyze.

Yes, that is what you meant, but that is where you are wrong. There is no independent reliable evidence for the existence of Jesus outside of the literature that contains him. It is therefore not at all clear that the individual behind the literary creation has a shred of historical reality.


The example most often mentioned in HJ circles is Ned Ludd, a legendary worker who smashed machines and gave rise to the Luddites. Historians now think that he never existed, but stories with biographical details developed very quickly after the alleged events. William Tell never existed. Tertullian and Irenaeus believed in the existence of a man called Ebion, the founder of the Ebionites, and even supplied some biographical details.

In more ancient times in China, Lao Tze is undoubtedly legendary, and Confucius probably never existed.

You can find some difference from the gospels in all of these cases, but they demonstrate that the human mind is capable of constructing a historical man out of legends, misinterpreted names, and thin air. Your claim that the gospels can only be explained by a historical man is just flat out wrong.

tanya

Agree

Disagree

I don't argue that genuine humans accused of being devils/demons/witches, or whatever, actually are supernatural beings. The fact that there are no witches, demons, or devils simply indicates that the accounts claiming such, must be inaccurate, by definition. Whether or not that person existed, remains open, pending inquiry, pending more credible source material, material which describes the person, without insisting on supernatural attributes. Do you possess such material for Jesus of Nazareth?


I argue that written records, attesting to supernatural qualities of person(s) NOT KNOWN to have existed, should be regarded as bogus--accounts which must not be regarded as factual, though they may well contain within them, genuine data, like the names of countries, rivers, mountains, villages, emperors, kings, and the like. My point is that such written evidence cannot be used to verify the existence of that person. Such verification must derive from some other source of information (text, coin, temple, tapestry, mosaic) which does not posit supernatural capabilities for the individual(s) in question.

In like manner, written records from the past, attesting to supernatural qualities of person(s) known to be fictitious, should also be regarded as bogus accounts. (Superman, Paul Bunyan with Babe the blue Ox)

Yes, I do not discriminate between bogus documents describing folks acknowledged to be fictional, and those describing persons whose biological credentials remain unproven, with however, acknowledged claims of supernatural potency.


I argue that supernatural attribution within a text, applied to a specific individual(s) renders that particular document useless as proof of that particular individual's existence. Philo's leter to Gaius, praising Herakles' valor in performing supernatural acts, is not confirmation of the existence of Herakles. It is evidence that Philo understood the belief system of Roman emperors, ruling his domain. In the case, cited, Mark's description of Jesus as "son of god", one is then obliged to regard Mark as bogus, with respect to establishing confirmation of the biological existence of Jesus of Nazareth.

I do not argue that we must discard Mark, but, rather, argue that we cannot claim Mark's gospel as evidence for the biological existence of Jesus of Nazareth, because of the repeated insistence, within Mark's text, on this character's supernatural capabilities. Some of the other characters, described in Mark, lacking supernatural attribution, may have lived in that era. No demand has been made, to insist that each and every character in a work of fiction, be imaginary. A demand has been made, to regard as non-authoritative, any text, describing characters supposedly possessing supernatural attributes.

The existence of mythical constructs within a text, does not imply that other aspects of the text must also be inaccurate, false, or deceptive.


Quite possibly.

Yes, I did fail to grasp that distinction. Sorry. My mistake.
How do we determine the biological fact of existence? How do we know that Paul Bunyan did not exist? How can I prove that Babe the Blue Ox is imaginary?

With Alexander of Macedonia, we have accounts which exaggerate his feats (legendary attribution), and we have accounts which describe supernatural accomplishments.
Sorting out fact from fiction may be arduous, complicated, and controversial. In the case of Alexander, there is a variety of evidence, not just writing, but whole cities, created by him, and constructed under his guidance. Those legendary accounts, and mythical accounts, may contain within them, genuine facts. How does one establish the route followed by his army traveling to India? The written record may be helpful, unless it explains that Alexander rode Al Buraq to reach India by way of Persia, traveling overland, from Egypt.

Disagree.

My logic suggests that legendary accounts regarding Alexander, (upon which, verification of his biological existence does not depend) may well contain within them, genuine nuggets of real data.

spin

You might like this bait and switch, but it is neither new nor of any substance. At best it is a poor analogy yet again reheated. The historicist refuses to do their job. They'll talk about mythicism. They'll talk about the fact that being historically rigorous might bring other figures into question. But it is all smoke hiding the fact that they cannot be historically rigorous except to try to subvert historical rigour.

Be straight, Gak: you cannot even verify that there was a historical Jesus.

In fact he may not have existed is more to the point. As long as people cannot face this issue, they will continue not to do history.

This must be comforting, Gak.

Yeah. It would be nice if someone would deal with the question of historicity. Too many people have circumvented the question and declared one way or the other.

Here is something I would love to see. There is a simple exercise in de Bono's thinking classes called PMI (=Plus, Minus and Interesting). People are given a topic to analyze. They are first asked in groups to concentrate on all the positive indicators without evaluating them. Everyone is expected to try to provide indicators, ie not a partisan situation where only those who hold a positive view providing positive indicators, everyone. Then all the negative indicators without evaluating them. And anything else that can't be immediately categorized as one of the other two gets put into the Interesting category. No evaluation as yet. The effort requires that the groups talk about it together to get the most they can find for each category. No idea should be criticized or omitted.

Here we would have a group of all forum members. They would have to leave their evaluation equipment at the door until all the PMI process has been completed. The question can be as simple as "does new testament Jesus contain in kernel a specific real person from the past?" We draw up a chart of all the positive indicators, all the negatives and stick in all the uncategorized thoughts as well. Only then can we begin to evaluate our findings.

Of course, as a group effort it works best in a face to face brainstorming session, but it is what has never been done in this subject. The evaluation needs to come after all the data are in, not before. That's why all the efforts in the field of Jesus historicity so far are basically shit. One cannot base a conclusion on confirmation bias.

LegionOnomaMoi

You "usually" don't read secondary sources, yet you speak as if you have read all the books which deal with the question of Jesus' existence rather than assuming it. Have you read most or all of these? And I don't mean simply Schweitzer (2nd ed.), Remsburg, Bultmann, etc. Dunn, Habermas (Gary, not Jürgen), Grant, Eddy & Boyd, and many others do not start with an assumption of historicity. Price, for example, provided one of the blurbs for the book by the last two authors (their longer The Jesus Legend), stating that they took his case seriously. Nor is this a complete list by any stretch of the imagination.

You accused me of misconstruing your use of "usually" earlier. So this time I'll ask: what exactly have you read of those works which do not assume Jesus' historicity or which relegate the question to a paragraph or two before dismissing it?

spin

If they end with it how do you know that they didn't start with it? And if they don't end with it but proceed as if it were the case, then there is no distinction between ending and not ending with it.