jgoodguy

Lets flesh this out a bit. Assume that the orthodox would would only keep documents valuable to them. Keeping and recopying documents is expensive and the orthodox would have no motive in saving documents opposed to their beliefs or even neutral documents at best and an incentive to destroy or trash them. Add to that scriptural errors both overt and covert-mis-copying, copying commentary from the margins into the main document, a copyist 'correcting' a document and a copyist adding text on his or official initiative. In the end you have a mess, conspiracy or not.

The oldest extent bible Codex Sinaiticus was being used a fuel when discovered. http://orthodoxwiki.org/Codex_Sinaiticus#Discovery Less important texts likely met the same fate.

ApostateAbe

I mentioned the crucifixion by Pontius Pilate, not just the existence of Pontius Pilate, and I take that to be a very central part of the narrative. Tacitus is what I take to be corroboration by external evidence. If you disagree, then maybe you should lay out what you take to be the "central narrative" of Christianity and also a few hypothetical examples of what you think would barely qualify as "external evidence."
In all of my arguments, I have put the evidence in the context of Christianity's immediate social and religious environment. There is no good historical argument if not for context. Now, take care that you are using the relevant social contexts, not contexts that are far removed either geographically or in time from what is expected, unless you can't explain the evidence so well with the most expected context.
I replied to this point in the relevant thread at this link:

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....81#post6792181

blastula

I don't why people keep mentioning Tacitus as though it's independent verification. You hear scholars doing that too as though Tacitus settles it. It's disingenuous to disregard the well known and strong uncertainty as though it's a fact.

ApostateAbe

In my opinion, I think you should be careful to distinguish a lack of extant writing from a lack of knowledge. Arguments from silence are very easily mishandled, and I wrote a thread on it a month ago (How to judge an argument from silence). Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence, but not as much or as often as you may think, and we do, in fact, have very good evidence of John the Baptist, through the writing of Josephus (see Wikipedia). Any explanation that you have for the gospel's John-the-Baptist accounts should take this evidence seriously.

ApostateAbe

I think Tacitus really would be receiving his knowledge through the myths of Christians that existed in his own time. It counts as "independent verification" primarily because it is an outsider's non-sympathetic perspective. He apparently thought it was plausible enough that there was some Jewish kook named Jesus who really was crucified by Pontius Pilate. If Jesus seemed like just an imaginary invention, then that is what Tacitus would have written. It is not evidence that I take to be especially persuasive--I much prefer to argue by making the best sense of the gospels themselves. But a lot of people out there (such as spin) have this idea in their minds that we simply can not get any historical conclusions out of any account that integrates extraordinary claims, and they demand external independent evidence. The writing of Tacitus would count, though it certainly is not much. When you design your methodology to get only the conclusion that you want (or to get no inconvenient conclusions), then that is what happens.

bacht

Well, John wasn't mentioned by anyone until the gospel of Mark was written. This suggests either he wasn't very important in real life, or he never existed at all. My current preference is to see him as a symbol of some sort of "passing of the torch" from early Jewish (Essene?) believers to later Markan (Alexandrian?) Christians, but I confess I don't understand a lot of the symbolism that Mark uses. I prefer the theory that Mark is allegory rather than history or biography.

Josephus is problematic, not a strong witness imo.

blastula

That Tacitus found it plausible is horrible evidence Abe. People today are convinced of many more details of the whole Jesus story just by hearing it from other Christians. That other people passed on Christian stories means nothing and is not in the least independent verification. You are making up new meanings for these terms.

ApostateAbe

It is not cut and dry, but the quality of how much the writing of Tacitus counts as "independent verification" is spectral. I am with you in that the evidence really isn't so good, in my opinion. If would be far better evidence, however, than a non-believer of today affirming the existence of Jesus. Tacitus lived much closer to the same time and place, and he and his associates would have a more accurate means to evaluate whether or not Jesus existed as a human or not.

An analogy would help. If, 2000 years from now, historians are trying to make sense of whether or not Joseph Smith existed, and they have only the book of Mormon, a few 20th century Mormon writings about Joseph Smith, and a non-Mormon in the 20th century who wrote that Joseph Smith was a con artist, then those historians would give greater weight to the probability that Joseph Smith existed because of it. The analogy is not perfect, but it does illustrate a point: outsider perspectives close to the time and place matter, one way or the other, whether they count as "independent verification" or not.

blastula

Historians back then show little effort in due diligence in verifying their stories. Tacitus wasn't acting like factcheck.org.

Josephus's Antiquities starts out with uncritically recounting the creation and Adam and Eve and reports Moses as his source.

ApostateAbe

We have knowledge of only two sets of Christian writings before Mark was written: Paul and Q. Paul doesn't mention John the Baptist, though he does mention baptism. This probably counts as evidence that John the Baptist wasn't so important to to Paul. We cannot, however, claim that Paul had no knowledge of John the Baptist. As for Q, John the Baptist has a central place in it right in the beginning (see my thread The complete [reconstructed] gospel of Q). Q would be a Christian tradition that is independent from Mark, and it would be therefore a very bold claim that John the Baptist was an idea that was confined to Mark. You will need to make good sense of the evidence about John the Baptist provided in the writings of Josephus, one way or the other, be it with an invention of Josephus, Christian forgers, or whatever else. I think it is bad historical method to say, "Welp, can't trust him," and then act the same as though the evidence just doesn't exist. I think we should care about evidence when we are trying to promote our conclusions.