Toto

With all due respect, I don't think you understand the method.

From what I have seen, Richard Carrier's book on the historicity of Jesus will clarify the issues here.

gurugeorge

But the "methods" are just normal methods of historical research - exactly as evinced by scepticism about Ned Ludd.

I grew up in my fiery political youth thinking of Ned Ludd as a venerable prototype of my favoured socialism (at the time - I'm now a classical liberal/libertarian).

Now I discover the old fellow probably didn't exist.

Hey ho.

The trouble is, there are a lot of people who can't afford to say "Hey Ho" if the scholarly consensus goes against Jesus' existence, because there's been too much emotional, social and financial investment in the idea that he did exist.

It's as if we still had Luddites among us, keeping the flame of Ned's memory alive. They'd be a bit upset at the suggestion that he didn't exist too.

But it's even worse with a religious figure.

(Parallel case: Laozi, eponymous author of the Laozi, also known as the Dao De Jing. There's now a strong strand of scholarly opinion, in both Chinese and Western academia, that he probably didn't exist. Some academics still fight that idea tooth and nail, and it upsets a few Daoists. But the amount of emotional "heat" around the Laozi issue still isn't nearly as much as around the Jesus issue, because the main thing about Daoism is the ideas and practices. However, the very Christian religious idea itself depends strongly on the historical events' having actually occurred. In relying so heavily on a one-time historical event, Christianity has painted itself into a corner, as it were.)

dog-on

You are missing the forest.

We have the NT writings as the main source of the Jesus story.

These writings are, prima facie, fantastical.

We have no other evidence that is not, in some way, connected to and/or derived from the aforementioned fantastical writings.

This is the starting point.

From a mythicist perspective, one can simply accept all the information at face value. There is no need to create a derivitive of the character described in the texts.

A historicist has to rewrite the story, based on a character that is not actually mentioned in the evidence and for which no evidence actually exists, to even begin making their case.

ph2ter

Because regarding the case of Paul we are helpless. The content of his letters is quite consistent regarding the historicity of Jesus. Any such clear indication would go against all what he has written about him and would change his whole theology about Jesus. That would mean also that the overall content of the letters could not stay the same.
I am pretty sure that if we discover some other unknown letters of Paul, that they would be no different in that matter and that they would not contain any clear indication of historicity.

jab

Dracula--from Count Vlad the Impaler
Marilyn Monroe & the Kennedys
Michael Jackson
Joan of Arc
Lucretia Borgia
Lenin
Mao
etc etc

gurugeorge

Mythologized people are perhaps more common than historicized myths but both exist, and both would be a live option if there had been no Christianity, and we had just dug up the NT and the Fathers and such, in some jars in the desert. However, "historicized myth" would seem the more likely option for the Jesus Christ entity described in such texts, in such a hypothetical situation, given the progression of less-to-more historical filling-in as time goes on.

The early stuff in Paul is heavily mythical, with just as much "historical detail" as you find in other myths - that is to say, not much, and not enough, in itself, to pin down historicity.

That could indeed be because Paul was a rather peculiar fan, who didn't have the fan's usual yen to cherish details about their beloved idol's life and doings; it could be because Paul was such a stone-gone mystic that he had no interest whatsoever in the flesh-and-blood teacher who had preceded him, and who he thought had given him teachings in his divine aspect.

But the simpler, and more preferable explanation (until something new and more obviously evident of historicity does turn up in a jar in the desert) is because there simply weren't that many historical details at that time - only just enough for the Christ entity to do its mythical job of coming obscurely (in reversal of the usual Messiah tropes), to fool the Archons, have his human part killed by them, and triumph in heaven. It just looks like a sketchy mythical story with mystical overtones.

IOW, the entity Paul is talking about looks like a mystical, theology-and-philosophy-laced construct, like any number of other such entities in other religions. It's only later that we find (what looks like) a sort of Stoic "exemplary biography", that has more of what looks like colorable historical detail, but granted the previous paucity of historical detail, is unlikely to be.

Doug Shaver

Other ahistoricists can speak for themselves, but the methods I use would lead me to infer a historical Jesus from certain kinds of evidence that I can imagine being discovered.

I won't deny that I could think of some way to explain it away so as not to have to change my mind about Jesus' historicity, but I'm unaware of any reason why I would do that. I don't like changing my mind any more than the next person does, but I've had enough practice at it to know that it won't kill me.

Petergdi

You do seem more reasonable to me than many ahistoricists.

The rules for accepting or rejecting hypothetical evidence must be the same as the rules for accepting or rejecting actual evidence. I don't have a firm stance on exactly what the rules should be, but it is evident to me that they should be the same.

Ahistoricists tell themselves and others that they would find some hypothetical evidence to be very convincing. I'm sure you believe that about yourself.

I find the existing evidence very convincing. Ahistoricists certainly have ways of explaining why the various bits and pieces of evidence need not convince them. I do think there is a problem in that every ahistoricist I have read uses explanations to deal with at least some of the evidence that would seem to be capable of dealing similarly with the more likely sorts of hypothetical evedence that might be discovered.

If I knew your rules and methods, and that they do indeed leave you open to persuasion by hypothetical evidence of a sort which might plausibly be discovered, that knowledge might provide what I would need to mount a persuasive argument based on existing evidence.

As things currently stand, some of the methods often employed by ahistorists would seem to make any such argument pointless.

Peter.

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

This is a nice discussion. I just found one example especially curious and I would like to take it a bit further.

Or pseudonymity for the whole letter.

Let us say that Peter did not specifically defend Paul's epistles, even as Scripture (2 Peter 3:16) Can't we see above :

"or if Peter would acknowledge Paul's teaching and authority".

Yet does the skeptic really care about the internal harmonies of the NT, that Peter supports Paul.

"Its doesn't exactly say his writing is scripture. Its not really Peter. Its not really Paul. This helps demonstrate that it is a forgery by someone trying to ... "

And even if ..
"Paul had indicated that he talked to Peter about what Jesus said."

Couldn't that be turned around in 8 different ways against the NT.

"Why doesn't Paul give us the specifics ? Why does he tell us that ? How come Peter doesn't mention this ? This makes the lack of Jesus-life stories more telling." Yada and a yada.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

gurugeorge

We have Paul's letters, which are acknowledged by scholars as early. In those letters, we don't have any example of the kind I outlined, that would clearly connect one of the people Paul is talking about to a human being that they had known.

Sure, you could still mount sceptical arguments. But what would be the point, at that point? The sceptical arguments exist because there's no obvious human to human connection there. Because there are no human to human connections there, that's why the mythicist option looms larger.

Again, while for some mythicists it may be the case that they've got some gripe against a living human founder, that's not the way it is for me, and I'll wager for most mythicists here. (Maybe you are detecting a trace of bitterness or irony - well, that's understandable, there's something hugely ironic about one of the world's great religions being founded on error - so much blood spilt over nothing, as it were. It's actually rather queasy-making if you think about it.)

As I suggested, just try this thought experiment: look at Paul's letters as if they'd just been dug up in the desert, and imagine there was no Christianity and nobody had heard of Jesus or Paul. Is it obvious that Paul is referring to a human being who had recently lived, and whom people Paul knew had known personally, just from Paul's letters alone? To me it's not at all obvious: the entity Paul is talking about is clearly mythological, divine, etc. There are some vaguely historical-sounding things there, sure, but there are vaguely historical-sounding things in many other myths. Myths sometimes had vaguely historical-sounding aspects. What's needed to pin down historicity for moderns is the kind of thing I pointed out, something connecting a human being Paul knew to a human being they knew.

As I say, the lack of it doesn't block HJ from being a possible interpretation, it just weights it less, and makes other options more likely and plausible.