stephan huller

I was reading spin's thread about the various positions on the person of Jesus and just musing that all the positions - including my own - have problems associated with them. I know that everyone here thinks that their position is the most rational or the most likely. And pushing aside a few notable people that post here whom most of us know are completely bonkers, it struck me how interesting it was that a group of intelligent people could hold so many different interpretations from the same basic body of evidence.

I guess my point is that even if you don't see eye to eye with someone else at this site - your brains really aren't that different. Your IQ is probably roughly the same (it's not like comparing yourself to a dog or a chicken). The fact that there is so great a difference of opinion must be attributable to uncertainty with the original body of evidence.

Now again, there are people here who accept everything as it has come down us, there are other who accept things mostly as they have come down to us and then there are the whack jobs who say it was all made up and there is absolutely no truth to anything.

I personally can't see either extreme positions as being tenable simply because of the involvement of organized groups of people within the Church from the second century onward attempting to manipulate what 'true belief' is. As such you can't say 'it's all true' or 'it's all false.' Most of us here are in between these two poles but I just wonder whether it is at all possible to have a 'reasonable theory' about what the Church was like before let's say - the end of the second century and Irenaeus's active manipulation of the canon.

In other words, is the agnosticism the only reasonable position with regards to the historical Jesus?

show_no_mercy

I think so, mainly because of this:

I think it's somewhat naive to think that even our seven "authentic" Pauline epistles as they are received today are pristine simply due to how many people had a stake in Paul arguing for their particular brand of 2nd century Christianity. We know that Christians were editing Paul's letters and we know that others wrote entire letters in Paul's name. Why trust that those who eventually became orthodoxy were the only innocent ones?

With the gospels, we have prima facie evidence that at least two other writers/communities (Matt/Luke) didn't have any qualms about rewriting the earliest gospel (Mark) to suit their own agendas - according to the most popular solution to the Synoptic Problem. Arguments can be made that John is also a reaction and rewrite to Mark.

I think it's impossible to sift through all of these problems to arrive at what would be the "historical" Jesus. Modern recreations of the "historical" Jesus are simply doing what Matt and Luke did: adding what they want their Jesus to be and subtracting whatever they find distasteful.

Juststeve

How about the historical Socrates? Is Agnosticism the only reasonable position?

Steve

stephan huller

Well Steve

There is a massive difference between the Jesus question and the Socrates question. While Xenophon and Plato's accounts differ, neither one of them claims that Socrates was God come down to earth. This is what the Marcionites believed and the Marcionite tradition is older than the Catholic tradition just as the Marcionite canon was older than the Catholic one. The way people ignore the Marcionites skews all the evidence in favor of one proposition.

Juststeve

Stephen:

When you say there is a massive difference do you mean a difference in degree or a difference in kind? I acknowledge a difference in degree, but a difference in kind? I'm not so sure.

If I don my Socrates skeptic hat I can make arguments for why we need not trust either Plato or Xenophon. They do describe the man differently. Perhaps they are not even referring to the same guy. Anyone have the original of what Plato or Xenophon wrote? Always grounds to quibble. In fact as you know there are fringe scholars who claim Socrates was fictional.

Where I come down is that the real existence of neither Jesus nor Socrates can be known for a certainty. If that's being an agnostic then count me in.

Steve

mountainman

No. We may approach the question of the historical Jesus in the appropriate field to arrive at an answer. Belief and theology are not the only contributory fields within which to ask and weigh questions of the field of ancient history. History examines evidence. All the evidence. It does not and should not ignore any elements of the evidence, although it may kvetch it via rhetoric etc. The whole picture of all the evidence must make sense as an historical narrative, using the elements of the evidence, excluding none.

Ancient historians, such as Carrier if I read him correctly, might associate a "degree of relative historicity" to Jesus, and to any person or event in ancient history, in order to frame an historical narrative using the ancient historical EVIDENCE in our possession.

There is thus some sort of range, even a percentage, from 0% to 100%, able to be attributable to the historical likelihood of an event, given appropriate weightings (again any hypotheses are required to made explicit), on the basis of ALL THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE. For example, in earlier threads, the historicity of Jesus and the historicity of Apollonius of Tyana were compared.

There is also the strange case that when historians at the end of the day do not have any evidence for a particular hypothesis they wish to test, for example the historical existence of jesus, then no computations can be performed on an empty set of "evidence", and they could not frame any historical narrative (which is the job of the historian). In this case, the "relative historicity" would not just be zero. It would be NULL.


On the basis of the evidence, historians are able to say "this event or that event is not proven by the evidence". This is common sense. You may call it agnosticism over the evidence, but at the end of the day its just common sense.







PS: is "agnosticism" the only reasonable position with the issue of the historical existence of "Russel's Teapot"?

stephan huller

There a massive difference between the Marcionites who believed that this 'Isu' was God descended from heaven to earth - a 'stranger' - and the Catholics who argued that Jesus was the Son essentially a 'creature' - something created in Mary by divine fiat. Anyone who called Jesus 'the Son' can't have argued that he was equal to the Father. Later bullshit muddied the water but I think the fault line runs across identifying Jesus as the Father or the Son. The Monarchians are lumped together with the Marcionites. I think anyone saying Jesus was the Son ORIGINALLY acknowledged that he was somehow subordinate to the Father.

I think the original paradigm (I think 'the Marcionite paradigm') was that the Father came to earth to adopt an initiate as his Son. This is the core of the Tootsie Roll. I think Jesus was the Father and the beloved disciple was the Son. I think this was intentionally juxtaposed against the covenant of 'Israel according to the flesh' i.e. where Moses only becomes acquainted ultimately with a lower hypostasis. I think that the Torah was written in such a way to allow for the idea that Israel wasn't worthy of the perfect religion which would be ushered in one day by the Messiah.

If Jesus is God the Father and the disciple the Son then that this changes the whole 'historical Jesus' paradigm. For you have the earliest or at least very early believers who believe that Jesus wasn't a person. Christ might have been a historical person but not the person we - through indoctrination into the Catholic tradition - assume to be the messiah of Christianity.

The Creator becomes a spectator in the whole drama of the redemption of humanity and who - according to Eznik - ultimately repents from his hostility to the glad tidings.

Juststeve

Stephen:

What dates do you assign to the synoptic Gospels in your thinking. Are they all pre-Marcion? How about John?

It will be Monday before I get back to you but I'm curious about this Marcionite line of thought.

Steve

stephan huller

I think that when the Philosophumena goes out of its way to deny that the Gospel of Mark is the gospel of the Marcionites that is money in the bank that someone thought that the Marcionite gospel was an earlier version of Mark. My suspicion would be a Markan gospel with elements we would recognize as 'Lukan' otherwise Tertullian and Epiphanius's testimonies don't make sense.

judge

Hi Stephan. None of our earliest sources for the existence of Jesus say he was "god come down to earth".
Paul certainly doesn't say this. Paul says the fullnes of the godhead dwelt on/in him.
Mark has him as the son of god.
Even John which comes later has him as "one with the father", but John also has jesus praying that his disciples would also be "one" with them.
So its difficult to conclude this meant "god come down to earth". Not that this stopped folk seeing it this way for their own ends.