spin

You were the one who wanted "a plausible coherent alternative to [your] suggestion".

I haven't supplied you with one.

But you're the one who needs an explanation to fill the evidential gap. Just realize that your explanation isn't based on evidence.

OK, I'll file it with all those other views that float around here.


spin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Gamera,

Given your line of extreme skepticism that we can never know if Socrates existed, would you agree that we can never know if Mickey Mouse or Walt Disney were historical figures? Do you believe that the films we have of Mickey Mouse could have been documentaries and the films we have of Walt Disney could have been drawn?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

French Prometheus

Without the manuscripts, we know that he was a Macedonian king who reigned after Philip II and before Philip III Arrhidaeus and who conquered the Persian Empire. IOW, he was one of the people who had the greatest impact on history during their lifetime. A king and conqueror. The son (and a general in the army) of the king who subdued the Greek city states and for which we have contemporaneous testimonies.

You don't really know much about the 4th-century Persian Empire and the history of coinage, do you?

Details about Alexander's life are open to debate and may have been made up by later writers. We can't know for sure if he really tamed a horse called Bucephalus, cut off the Gordian knot and fucked Hephaestion. But his very existence and a few major facts about his life can't reasonably be dismissed.

Let me say it again: I'm not an MJer (though I'm not a "strong" HJer either). But your comparison of Jesus and Alexander is preposterous to the point of hurting your case. Alexander is just not a good example. He had too much of an impact on the whole Mediterranean world during his short life. His historicity is documented by the wealth of archeological artefacts and remains scattered throughout the Empire he conquered. There's no discontinuity in the material culture left behind from Philip II down to the last Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings.

French Prometheus

His coins didn't "spread" to the Persian Empire. They were minted there. They bear mint marks that enable us to pinpoint the place where they were made.

spin

Whoa, don't start either confusing him with more facts or doing his job for him! There is a lot of evidence for Alexander from the period, but until he can deal with just one line of evidence (in this case, the coins), there's no point in giving him more. He doesn't want to know and it will only be more work and give him the opportunity to forget one and obfuscate about the next.

As it is, he hasn't even looked at the coin evidence and is only prepared to waste people's time stonewalling about it with a sham defense. (Fingers in ears saying loudly, "la-la-la".)

And he doesn't want to know!

He's been trained to dismiss things. Law is a sophistic business. It's got nothing to do with facts: they only cloud the process.

Because he has no witnesses in his case, he's trying to argue that your witnesses have no value in your case and that he has secondary evidence which is better than yours. Obviously he has no interest in knowing more about your witnesses: they don't help him. His aim, using his double standard, is to try to demonstrate that you have a double standard.

He shifts emphasis from primary evidence to narrative account because in his mind it is only the narrative that allows you to make sense of the primary evidence. This neat conceit allows him to think he has washed his hands of the fact that he has no primary evidence for the case he is advocating, ie the case of Jesus. He thinks that if he makes it so that you need to show him your primary evidence isn't really primary evidence, that it has no value until it can be contextualized within a narrative account of the past, he can then argue that the narrative account of the past for his client is better attested than yours, so his client must have existed. Therefore he will claim to the judge that you are using a double standard, case closed. All this without getting his brain dirty with facts. The lawyer doesn't want to get the judge confused with the other person's facts.

Yes, there is a lot of primary evidence for Alexander, and Gamera refuses to look at it. He wants you to waste your effort trying to convince the unconvinceable, ie himself, but until he can show that he understands what it means that the Alexander coins suddenly started being minted -- not just spread -- minted from Egypt to Babylon, there is no point feeding him more. If he won't deal with the significance of the coins, he won't deal with any evidence. It will just be more sophistry. There's no judge in this courtroom to bring him to his senses.


spin

JoeWallack

JW:
I tell you the truth, I'm surprised Gamorah hasn't claimed (yet) that your coin evidence could just be copies of copies of copies (hint for for Objective Reader as to why ancient coins are potentially exponentially better evidence than ancient manuscripts).



Joseph

Gamera

And?

Without the narrative, can you think of some reason why coins with Alexander's image would be minted there? I can.

Gamera

The irony is, this isn't my extreme skepticism. It's the extreme skepticism of the Jesus mythicists, applied to Alexander and Socrates, to show how off base it is.

You've sort of missed the point and gotten caught up in the moment.

Gamera

We don't have to assume. The texts are in the form of a graeco-roman biography, so they are in the genre of history. In addition, they refer to historical events verified by other means.

Now, you can argue that a fictional story was embedded in an historical context, but that's not the same thing as saying there is no reason to assume there is any history there. And you have the genre problem, since the gospels seem to squarely fit into the historical genre of the times.

Let me suggest that you have retrojected a category onto the gospel texts that didn't exist at the time and only became possible to distinguish after the fact. Put all the texts of the time in a room and categorize them, and you are likely going to group the gospel texts with Xenophon's Agesilaus, Satyrus' Euripides, Tacitus' Agricola, Plutarch's Cato Minor, not Ovid's Mythologies or Daphnis & Chloe.

I'm curious what you thought of Richard Burridge, What are the Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk)? You may have discussed this before, but it goes to the root of the issue.

Steven Carr

What do XENOPHON's,,,,, SATYRUS's...., TACTITUS's..., PLUTARCH's,,, have in common that the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to Matthew, the Gospel according to Luke, and the Gospel according to John do not?

Named authors?