gurugeorge

Btw, before I respond to Amaleq13's post I should make the embarrassed correction that it is of course Siegel and Shuster who invented Superman, not Simon and Schuster (who are book publishers). That brain fart was the result of either too much coffee or not enough.

Also, Amaleq13, hope you don't mind but I'm just pursuing this to the bitter end because it's fun and informative for me. Some of what you are saying I do find persuasive, but I still think I'm making some sort of valid point, and arguing about it may help me clarify what I'm saying - it may turn out that the valid point I'm making isn't what I think I'm saying after all, and that would be a good discovery (well for me at least, no particular reason why you should be doing charity work ).

OK let's backtrack a bit. I've been talking about the New Testament, taken as what it's presented as by Christianity - as a testament to the existence of an entity, in the form of a bunch of stories (and letters and stuff). That's what I'm looking at in the first instance. Isn't taking Mark to be the first version going beyond prima facie? i.e. aren't you already taking the worked-over results of philological investigation as a basis here?

I mean, before such an investigation who's to say what's original? After all, for example (IIRC) early orthodox Christians when we first have record of their opinions about the gospels, thought Matthew was the original gospel and Mark just a bland adumbration missing out all the juicy bits.

Well my interest is kind of inbetween a philosophical look at first principles wrt what's going on here and the details. I'm not well equipped enough to get into an argument over the details, so let me amend what I'm saying somewhat: I don't really care much about whether one thinks of a "God-man" as just a man who's depicted as having extraordinary powers and is related to God in some way, or a literal God-man as in the Nicene Creed. The logic of it is, the entity depicted in the New Testament, qua testament (i.e as presenting a case, evidence, etc.), is a character who can't be accepted by rationalists on the grounds that a) such an entity is seemingly impossible anyway (as we understand the world), and b) the evidence doesn't pass Hume's test to the extent we could be persuaded out of that opinion.

But anyway, I refer to my point above: with these kinds of arguments you are going beyond what Christians have presented and are taking the results of some investigation as your "prima facie".

Well, I'm taking seriously the Christian claim that they have serious evidence, testimony, of some sort of entity. I'm taking that claim as the prima facie claim. Why not? To introduce another overworked Latin phrase, we can't rule the possibility of a God-man out of court apriori - some good evidence (in the Humean sense) could conceivably turn up for such an entity, and then we should have to give it serious consideration. That, after all, is the hope of Christians - that we will be persuaded by the NT that this "Jesus Christ" god-man lived, died for our sins, etc.

No but even in Mark he's super-powered, and therefore cannot exist according to a rational understanding of the world (or rather, if a rationalist were to believe he existed, he'd have to have evidence the falsity of which would be more extraordinary than the events depicted).

And if you look at the NT as a whole, he's even more of a superhero.

I disagree. Either you take the whole package as presenting the Christian claim it presents, or you ignore the Christian claim right from the start, and admit right from the start that you're dealing with a bunch of texts that could be anything. If you take the whole package, then from a rational point of view, as it happens, it turns out that it has to be laughed out of court. It doesn't present a prima facie case for a miracle-working god-man, or even miracle-working prophet, at all, according to ordinary rationalist criteria.

So then you have to admit that you are dealing with a bunch of texts that could be anything - but at least you've honoured the presentation - you've honoured what Christians are presenting as a testimony of what they believe it to be, and at least taken it into consideration, but it's just that you have said "no, not good enough, there can't be such an entity, there must be more to it than that, let's dig deeper". And the digging deeper includes a range of options including "obscure prophet", "lies", "fraud", "literature", etc., etc. But at this stage you've already gone beyond prima facie, beyond the "on the face of it" claim of the NT to be testimony, or evidence, or history. Might be, might not be.

But even in your own terms, you have to admit that the magic powers in Mark aren't just tacked on out of exaggeration or embellishment - the miracles are part of Mark's story, they are integral to the points he is making, the story he is telling.

But hang on a minute, isn't the only reason you're taking this as history at all in the first place because Christians have presented it as testimony, as evidence, as historical?

In which case why aren't you treating it, in the first instance, as historical in the way they present it? (i.e. as proposed evidence of a miracle-working god-man, however you might want to put it). Why are you bypassing that yet still treating the text as a historical document?

It's like, you've taken the bit from Christians about the NT being history, but you haven't taken the other part of the deal, that it's the history of a miracle-working god-man. But why take the "it's history ..." bit from Christians if you aren't taking the other bit ".... of our god-man" that goes with it? Or rather: why keep the "it's history ..." bit, if you're prepared to dismiss the "... of a god-man" bit out of hand?

That such an entity is unlikely and you can then immediately go on to dig deeper is true, but surely at that stage, for a rationalist, the rational thing to do is to at least suspend belief about the quality of the texts as having any history (evidence, testimony, etc.) in them at all?

i.e. once the prima facie case fails, for basic reasons, then the texts have shown themselves unreliable as testimony, as historical evidence - so then they could be any number of things (including texts with a bit of history - e.g. my "Clark Kent" example - in them).

But by that stage you've already gone beyond prima facie - the prima facie case has already failed, and doubt is cast on the whole kit and caboodle.

Sure, stories, myths, even myths with historical figures interacting with the miraculous ones - but stories purporting to be proof or historical evidence or testimony?

Hehe, it's funny, because that's exactly what I think you are doing

Let me put it another way: the prima-facieness goes with the presentation by Christians of a bunch of texts that are collected in order to prove the existence of a certain entity. But as soon as this testament is understood to fail in a Humean sense, and moreover to be about the kind of entity that on rational grounds can't possibly exist (at least in terms of how we understand the world at present), then there's no more prima-facieness to carry over to any kind of historical investigation that might take place after that point. The texts have already lost their claim to be taken as history by that stage, and the context in which to hold them is no longer clear - they might turn out to contain history, but they might be any number of other things. The historical investigation has to start afresh as a historical investigation, as if nobody had every heard that they were meant to be testimonial, historically evidentiary documents, without any predisposition to take the documents as deliberately bearing evidence or history or testimony of anything at all. (e.g., from that point we have no way of being sure that the genuine historical characters mentioned in them bespeak their validity as historical documents or not - for all we know, they might just be literature, lies, etc.)

No, no, I don't think I'm doing that, I'm saying that the option that a revered person has been mythologized ought to be understood as only one possibility among many (including fraud, literature, pure myth, etc.), and I'm doubting that this is the attitude taken by NT scholarship (from what I can gather, on my acquaintance with it so far).

Ok. And I know that this is the careful position you take, but is that properly cautious position the position taken by NT scholarship as a whole?

But in my example, the connection between the real Clark Kent (who had the statue put up to him) and Superman is actually accidental. The Superman stories are in no way about the real Clark Kent at all, even though his secret identity in the stories is "Clark Kent", it's almost accidental.

And that's just one option - Siegel and Schuster might have taken more than the name and inspiration (the small town setting), they might have included some elements of the real Clark Kent's life in their stories. But the stories still wouldn't be about Clark Kent in any meaningful sense.

I know this is a bit of a side-issue from our main discussion, but this is approaching what Price is saying - even if there was a real guy who formed some kind of inspiration at some point, there might still be no historical data about that person in the stories, and they might still be fiction!

Again, once the prima facie case (what I'm calling that - the presentation of Christian testimony to the existence of this entity) has failed, it's all up for grabs, there's simply no way of knowing where to start, everything is hypothetical. The only way you could collapse the ambiguity is by having maybe some hard archaeological evidence or textual "smoking gun".

Again, let me point out that these aren't just stories, they are supposed to be testimony, history. So what I see you doing is shearing off and keeping the historical aspect from the case presented by Christians, and still treating them as history, when they've already lost their claim to be treated as any kind of history at all.

It's a package deal - as testimony, it's testimony to a specific entity. Outside the presentation by Christians of these texts as testimony, why would you think of them as having any historical aspect at all? If some of the gospels and letters of Paul, say, suddenly appeared in jars in the desert, with stories about a fantastic entity, would your first thought be "ah there must be a "historical Jesus" behind this "fantastic Jesus"? If you look at some of the more outré Nag Hammadi texts, and if they were all you had, would you immediately suspect that they presented a historical figure?

So isn't the only reason you are first thinking of them as having some history in them just because Christians have presented them as such? But they've presented a fantastic figure as historical! So if you don't think the fantastic figure is possible, why should you think the texts have any historical or evidentiary quality to them at all?

But "entirely fictional" is just one possibility - so the correct comparison would be "man mythologized" versus "entirely fictional", "fraudulent", "purely mythological". Once you start adding in the other options, the weighting isn't so clear cut is it? Especially when you factor in that the "incorrect acceptance" might have been by a small cult at first, and later spread to innocent bystanders for no better reasons than fire and sword, rhetorical persuasion, etc.

Good point.

Amaleq13

Then you aren't talking about "the story". You are arguing against theology.

I'm only interested in a rational approach to the texts and that doesn't include ignoring what scholars tell us about the formation of the collection.

No. We have four different stories by four different authors. It is a mistake to treat them as though they were all written at the same time by the same author. Feel free to take whichever version you wish first. I don't think any will support your summary.

Switching to Matthew as primary doesn't help your false characterization that a "God-man" is depicted in the story. The only significant difference being that the Jewish prophet was made "Son" at his conception.

That claim, assuming someone is actually making it, has nothing whatsoever to do with correctly identifying the "face value" story being presented.

That it makes no sense seems sufficient. What does it mean to say that this "Christian claim" is taken at face value and how is that relevant to the story we have in the text?

The powers did not exist but there is no good reason to assume that the existence of the man is dependent upon their reality.

If you are looking at the NT as a whole, you should be sitting in church.

I'll take "B" but without the unnecessary addition. I'm less interested in what some hypothetical Christian says about the text than what the texts say, themselves.

There is no reason to make such an admission and certainly not because one ignores a particular Christian claim about the texts.

Yes, they go to the significance of the sacrifice at the end. Recognizing that changes nothing in my position.

I'm not taking anything as history. I'm identifying that the story, at a first impression level, depicts an individual existing in history.

No, it "goes" with the texts. Period. Best obtained, I would think, by reading it is the original language. You have been talking about theology and I've been talking about the texts.

I do not disagree with that.

No, the texts, themselves, quite clearly offer a story set in a specific time and place in history. This is the prima facie aspect of the story you've been denying. I don't need anyone to tell me that the story purports to tell a story from history. I can read it plainly stated in the text.

So did numerous authors in the late 1800's but many of their characters were simply embellished historical figures.

We've got an ancient religion and old texts that appear to describe its origins. That "face value" connection should be sufficient.

Not according to math. Your options only serve to divide up the non-historical possibilities into necessarily smaller numbers of examples. I was offering the best chance of competing with the number of "man mythologized" examples.

gurugeorge

Right, this is the crux of our disagreement. The story purports to tell a story from history, exactly.

But the history-purporting quality as I see it only exists in the context of the NT as a whole - it's in the context of the NT being a testament that Mark purports to tell a story from history, that Matthew purports to tell a story from history, that Luke, etc., etc.

Suppose you just found Mark in a jar in the desert, and had never heard of anybody called "Jesus Christ", would you think it purports to tell a story from history?

Why would you plump for history rather than just literature that has some historical characters?

It seems to me that the only reason you are reading Mark as purporting to tell a story from history is because Mark is found in the context of the NT as a whole, which is the thing that (according to Christian tradition) purports to tell a story from history.

That's the prima facie that I'm talking about. What you are calling the prima facie purporting of telling a story from history, from my point of view, is something that you're half accepting the Christian provenance for, and half not. i.e. as a good rationalist, you're automatically discarding the fantastic bits, and looking at it as a history-purporting text, embellished with fantastic details, but to me that's not right because the history-purporting quality only comes from Christian tradition about a God-man, to whom the fantastic bits are integral, and if you ditch the God-man, you have to ditch the history-purporting along with it. (Not ditch for good, but from then on hold it as one option among many, rather than being the prima facie way of looking at it in your terms.)

My brain hurts

Amaleq13

That first appearance is what we've been talking about with regard to prima facie and what you've strangely been denying.

No, it exists for each version on its own. All you really need is sufficient background knowledge to recognize Pilate.

Obviously. Any story set in a specific time period and involving actual historical figures is, on first impression, a story we are to understand as taking place in history.

You start from first appearances.

gurugeorge

Because, as I said in the next paragraph, to me, the history-purporting bit only occurs in the context of the NT as a whole.

Are you saying that the existence of some historical figures in a text that you've never seen before (say, dug up in a jar in the desert) would alone be sufficient to make the document, prima facie, a historical document?

That seems doubtful to me, and too sweeping. A historical novel has those conditions but a historical novel doesn't necessarily purport to be a historical document - we are not necessarily meant to understand the novel's events as actually, really and truly, taking place in history.

Now I don't know exactly what sorts of genres of literature there were at that time, or whether "historical novel" is really even an apposite comparison, but I've seen some discussions here and elsewhere about analogous kinds of literature around at the time (at least analogous in terms of the logic involved - i.e. something written without the intention that people believe the things depicted happened).

I think saying that our Mark-in-a-jar is prima facie historical (in the sense that, on the face of it, it looks like we're meant to understand the writing as historically factual writing) would be premature. It looks to me like you couldn't really say what it is, whether it even looks like religious literature (e.g., none of the characters, including even Jesus, come out of it looking particularly good).

Regardless, thanks for taking the time to pursue this. It's clarified for me the difference between the context I'm talking about, the context in which the NT was preserved and handed down, as a testament meant to be taken as history (albeit about an impossible God-man), and the context you're talking about which is that you think the NT documents each individually, on the face of it, mean themselves to be taken as history because you note that they have historical characters and places.

Magdlyn

Excuse me for chiming in on this conversation. I can sort of see what both of you are saying, and respect both positions, but I feel George has a more sensible position.

I find this a very strange statement indeed. If you found Harry Potter in the desert and saw it took place partly in London with some recognizable landmarks or persons, and then read the whole book, you'd assume it was actual history? Or you'd assume the author meant it as actual history? Why?

In the gospels, even though there are actual historical figures, such as Caiaphas and Pilate, from what we know about actual history, they both act in ways in the gospels contrary to how they really acted in history. Ie: Sanhedrin meeting at night, Pilate being too conciliatory. Then you have the census "requirements." Also, Jesus' disagreements with the "Pharisees" are not reflective of what was going on theologically, as far as I understand.

If we are not just talking about Mark (and excuse me if you are), there are also many geographical details that the authors get wrong.

So, besides the magical goings on, even the "straight" history is presented incorrectly.:huh:

PhilosopherJay

Hi Magdlyn,

Another pertinent example here can be found in the issue of Look Magazine from February 27, 1940. In a comic strip, Superman ends World War II by arresting Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin and bringing them before the League of Nations for trial.

We may imagine a 41st century historian finding the issue and proclaiming, "Surely this is proof that the Superman story had some basis in historical fact. Nobody doubts that Stalin and Hitler existed or that there was a League of Nations." Hopefully, the more acute future historians will recognize that the only thing the comic strip means is that the owners and publishers of Look magazine took an isolationist stance at that point in history and was using a popular fictional character to help propagate their position.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi All,

I am wondering if the controversial historian Harry Elmer Barnes should be added to the list. In an article called "The Jesus Stereotype," he wrote:

Quote:

We are equally incapable of arriving at any definite picture of the personality and career of Jesus... In spite of the slim body of documentary material bearing upon Jesus and his teachings, and conceding that plausibility of the thesis that he was not actually an historic character, it seems to the writer more consistent with probability to conclude that Jesus was a historic personage, concerning whom we have an unfortunately small body of valuable and dependable information.

This seems to me to be a borderline case. While he believes some kind of historic Jesus is more likely than a mythical Jesus, he does say that a mythical Jesus is a plausible thesis.Any thoughts?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Magdlyn

Right PJ, and I'm sure we could present thousands of other such examples. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe also takes place during WWII and shows 4 children being sent to the safety of the country from London. I have read that concerned parents really did send their kids away like this.The children are also depicted wearing period clothing and speaking as school children of the era spoke.

However, a magic wardrobe being a gateway to a country full of mythological beasts and witches and talking animals is not a reality-based occurrence. So, we do not have to bother ourselves that those 4 children and their relatives actually existed.

(completely OT: I had to look up the spelling for occurrence! Good grief. I could not get the right number of c's, r's, nor figure out if there was an A or an E at the end! )

Amaleq13

Yes, and that is demonstrably false. Each story depicts Jesus in a specific time and place in history and interacting with a specific individual from that time and place in history. Each Gospel, therefore, offers a prima facie story from history. IOW, upon one's first impression, each story purports to describe events that actually happened at a specific place and time in history.

How would one avoid noting such a thing upon one's first reading?

It is simple and that is precisely what is appropriate for a "first impression". You are making this far too complicated and missing the point as a result.

You continue to confuse the first impression one obtains from a story and the factual nature of the story. It makes no sense to suggest that a "historical novel" does not, on first impression, purport to tell a story from history. If it doesn't, it is a horrible failure and there would appear to be no basis for the label!

You seem to have difficulty stopping your analysis at your first impression. I cannot otherwise explain your refusal to accept the painfully obvious (ie the story explicitly claims to describe events from history).

Here you are confusing the "first appearance" of the story and the intent of the author. I've said nothing about the latter and it certainly involves more than just one's first impression of the story.