renassault

Because Paul is concerned with the only thing that matter to ancient Christians: salvation, and he focuses on the theological aspects of it. And Paul did believe in a physical Jesus as evidenced by Galatians 4:4 and the description of the last supper in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11.

According to Crossan the early Christians or at least Paul believed so, like Romans 1:3. In my opinion, the text says this expressing the theology that Jesus was brought back to Heaven from being humbled by the Incarnation (Philippians 2:5-7).

krosero

Rick, Earl and Ben:

I have some ideas about what can make an argument from silence more or less objective and I'd like to ask for reactions and feedback from each of you.

Comments from anyone else are also welcome.

In my essay from a few months ago , I presented the historical record as silent about the Pauline beliefs that Doherty's theory argues for, namely the unearthly life and execution of Jesus Christ. I argued for the absence of external witnesses to this faith.

I said that I felt on solid ground with this argument from silence because when I expect a certain entity (Pauline mythicism) to be mentioned by its contemporaries, I am prompted not by my own common sense about what should appear in the historical record; I am prompted by the historical record itself. There are external witnesses to many forms of faith about Christ. We have the proto-orthodox talking about heresies and trying to refute them.

If those are mentioned, then why not Pauline mythicism?

That, I think, is an objective standard, or as close to an objective standard as we can get: we expect people to mention the kind of things that they tell us are important.

You gave, Earl, an analogy with a married couple, in which the husband dies and there's a question about whether he had secretly won a lottery. That is the type of analogy that makes your argument from silence seem so subjective. You're trying to compare an ancient situation with a modern one, which risks every kind of anachronism. You're comparing a historical ancient situation with a hypothetical one drawn up as you like (not an invalid exercise, by the way, given that hypothetical situations can clarify our thinking; just an exercise full of risks). If anyone grants that the rise of Christianity is analogous to the death of a husband in a modern, private situation, then the analogy may seem like "common sense" (and I put that in quotes because you do). But do you have analogies actually closer in time and character to the rise of Christianity?

You emphasized “common sense”, but that is risky. Common sense leads me to believe that we should have some surviving historical record of the eruption of Thera circa 1650 B.C.E., because it was the greatest natural catastrophe of that millenium. But historians are surprised that the catastrophe does not seem to be recorded by surviving historical accounts. What I get from this is that the historical record often confounds common sense – especially the common sense of moderns like us, and even more so, rationalists like yourself who expect that events which we regard as important should have been noted by the ancients with the kind of detail and statements that we would like to see.

In a past thread it was asked whether modern historical works about India mention Sai Baba -- a closer analogy to Jesus. Common sense might lead you to expect this, given the size and longevity of Sai Baba's movement. I was somewhat surprised not to find a general history of India that mentioned him.

I have one other suggestion, and it concerns Occam’s Razor. An argument from silence is best, I think, when it does not force us to create new entities. Because Jesus is not mentioned in the ways that Earl expects him to be mentioned in certain texts, he posits a new faith – one that we are then obligated to fit into the historical picture, e.g., by asking what the relationship of this faith was to known communities, whether any contemporaries mentioned it, etc.

Earl actually asks us to accept, by my count, three new entities: faiths in which Jesus lived and died entirely in the heavens; faiths which generated or accepted the Gospel stories as allegories in their entirety; and faiths (in some apologists) that did not have any form of Jesus Christ as part of their faith.

(If anyone is wondering, my count of three is guided not just by Earl’s work, of course, but by what the proto-orthodox were writing. Based on what they denounced, it seems reasonable that they would have identified these three as distinct “heresies” about Christ: worshipping a sublunar Jesus; calling him a mere allegory; and rejecting him entirely. Again my guiding standard is not what I think the ancients should have found important, but their own writings telling me that they found these kinds of things worthy of note).

By contrast, when we say that the record is silent about these new entities, this is a cautious argument from silence – one that seeks to reduce the total number of entities rather than raise it.

That, I suggest, may be a kind of loose objective standard to use as a general principle (but none of these standards that I have mentioned should be regarded as hard and fast rules without possible exceptions).

Your thoughts, please, gentlemen.

Kevin Rosero

Rick Sumner

And therein lay the problem. The subjectivity is seldom acknowledged. If you acknowledge that it's the case, I appreciate your candor, though I think we still disagree on just how subjective it is. And that's not a condemnation of you, it's an assessment of what I consider to be the bankruptcy of the entire exercise.

If you think that the evidence has not been looked at, I must confess I, at least, find that offensive. After the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of words people like myself, Ben, GDon, Brian Trafford, Peter Kirby and so on have spent looking at the AFS, the suggestion that the evidence hasn't been looked at is preposterous. We've looked. We just weren't persuaded.

We agree that the arguments aren't on equal footing, but we are diamterically opposed in assessing which argument is the lesser. We take those divergent positions based on subjective interpretation. There is no other tool behind it, and that is my point.

Exactly.

You so and others "regard these as very good reasons[/i]? Splendid. Myself and others view the reasons for why Paul is silent as very good reasons. We've found that the AFS creates more questions than it solves, and think that in counter-argument they're largely ineffective.

So who's right? Have not both parties looked at the evidence? Have not both parties heard the arguments from both sides? Without new material there is no way to assess who is right objectively. That is the crux of the matter.

This is tangential, because I'm not denying that you've presented argument, I just oversimplified the ultimate positions rather than writing a long post in which my point might get lost. But I'll ask a question anyway--perhaps it can be a fruitful discussion for another thread, should it go anywhere:

Is Jesus as the Son of God the real thrust of Paul's missionary movement? Is it even important to it? Or just a definition of sorts? There's really no way to tell for sure, because we nothing survives of his proselytizing (despite the colorful dialogue that serves as an appendix to your book). Almost anything we suggest about what Paul did or did not say when he proselytized is wild speculation. We know that at least some converts (though not Paul's converts) had heard that Jesus was the son of God by the power of the resurrection (Rom.1.4), but we don't know how he thought that worked either, because he never explains.

Do you see the problem Earl? We don't know nearly enough about Paul, his context, his audience or his proselytizing.

You seem to be missing my point, which has nothing to do with whether you (or anyone else) has argued for their position (you seem to have assumed that I'm saying that no one has argued--which is probably my fault for the over-simplification of both parties. If that's offended you, as it seems to, then I apologize for leading to that impression). The point rests in how compelling one finds each argument. And how compelling one finds it is entirely, 100% subjective.

Do you honestly think that's all that's been said on the matter? That I was offering a simplification of your position, but an accurate reflection of your opponents? Surely not. But if so, I can only suggest you go through the archives of this very board.

How logically argued is it? You don't know any more about how Paul proselytized than anyone else does. That, again, isn't a condemnation of you, it's an assessment of the excercise. We can't logically argue it, because there simply isn't enough evidence. We can come up with scenarios, and that's it. The viability of such scenarios is in the eye of the beholder.

I've snipped the rest, because it's more of the same--it's opinion presented as though it is something more tangible. Speculation presented as argument. And we can both go 'round and 'round, and speculate all we like. Ultimately which speculation we find more persuasive will always be subjective, there is no way to objectively pick a winner

I'll keep this last line though, because it's such a nonsensical statement:

We're not discussing religion, we're assessing history. We'll do better if we both treat it as such. I have no pony in a religious race here, and I never have.

For what my biases in regards to religion are worth, I was baptized Catholic because the Separate School board has always been better in Calgary. I've never been a practicing Catholic, nor have I ever been a believing Christian. My parents are both atheist. My sister is Buddhist. I have no pony in that race, no theological axe to grind against your position.

As to whether or not religion is a notable exception in this regard, I can only say "Nonsense." Pick up five commentaries on Shakespeare, you'll get five different interpretations of him. It's thoroughly subjective, entirely unquantifiable, and there's absolutely not way to tell who is right. Each position is argued for, each case is laid out, and to be sure, each thinks the others is unfeasible. Which one is right is a matter of opinion--the fact that it's argued is irrelevant, the question is how compelling one finds such an argument. The answer is dependent on one's own biases.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Ben C Smith

These thoughts are similar to the criteria for this argument set up by various historians who have written about how to do history. For example, Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier write on pages 74-75 of From Reliable Sources (or via: amazon.co.uk) (emphasis mine):

Of course, an argument from silence can serve as presumptive evidence of the "silenced" event only if... the person suppressing the information was in a position to have the information, and was purposing to give a full account of the story from which he omitted the crucial information, and if there were no compelling reasons why he should have omitted the information (other than the wish to conceal).

The heresiologists give every appearance of trying to exhaustively list every single heresy to put each in its place; they are, IOW, purposing to give a full account. If no heresiologist mentions heresy X, then it is a fairly safe assumption that heresy X was not a known heresy. (Even here, however, I myself would look to other arguments to bolster the one from silence.)

I think Earl may argue, however, that Pauline mythicism died out before our first exhaustive heresiologists (late century II, such as Irenaeus) wrote. I do not know, however, how he would respond to this same charge regarding his logos Christians (Felix, Theophilus, et alii).

Perhaps even more to the point, the exact analogy given was more than an argument from silence:

Here we are evaluating testimony, not the lack of testimony. If this man on his deathbed apologized for his poverty (and if he did not claim his winnings in his tax returns), then to claim that he was really rich is to call him a liar. And perhaps he is; perhaps he was leading a double life or such. But, whatever the case, we are evaluating the truth of two positive statements, that of the man himself and that of the acquaintance.

Furthermore, bankbooks strive to be exhaustive. Therefore, we may take the missing entry in them as good evidence against such a deposit having ever been made, at least in those particular banks. Again, the man may have been leading a double life, keeping a secret bank account on the side, but once again, and for the same reason, the argument from silence here is completely overshadowed by our own evaluation of his character (as a witness to his own affairs) against the post-mortem allegations.

Finally, the acquaintance in this case needs to provide positive evidence of his own contention. While the widow herself is going to have a close emotional attachment to the truth or falsity of this claim, those involved in the situation but with less personal attachment to it should be able to say: Okay, you have made your claim, and we admit that your claim is possible (since people have been known to lead double lives before; argument from analogy). Now, support your claim. We are not obliged to do anything about your claim, or even believe it, without evidence in its favor.

This is how I see the analogy above. How does this analogy fit in with arguments from Pauline silence?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

What I find most remarkable on this thread (at least so far) is how few mythicists and mythicist sympathizers actually regard this as a smoking gun for the reasons Price and Doherty adduce. We have one mythicist who thinks this passage is a smoking gun, but not at all for the point of the OP, which was the apparent naming of Jesus only after his exaltation. This mythicist, Jacob Aliet, apparently presumes that the name received after his exaltation was either Christ or Lord (or both), in agreement with a lot of mainstream commentators and against Doherty and (at least tentatively) Price, yet still regards this passage as a smoking gun:

Philosopher Jay has this to say:

Gerard Stafleu agrees with Jacob Aliet on the name bestowed, and thus concludes that this passage, while of course compatible with mythicism, does not stand out as one of its most powerful proofs:

Jayrok also believes that the name bestowed upon Jesus was the title of Lord:

AA has his usual kind of things to say:

And so does Pete Brown:

(Presumably Pete would have to deny that this passage was bestowing the name Jesus on this divine figure only after his exaltation, since he thinks that Eusebius is the one writing the epistle, and Eusebius certainly did not think that the son of God got the name Jesus only after his exaltation.)

On this thread so far, only Earl Doherty appears to appreciate this passage as a smoking gun precisely because of the timing of the bestowal of the name Jesus:

I have to admit that I find these results on this observation by Couchoud a little bit surprising. Did I perhaps overestimate its value for the mythicist case?

Ben.

dog-on

Ben,

1.) I believe that the mythisist case rests on the fact that Paul's theology stands, as is, without the need to insert an historical person at it's center.

2.) The HJ case requires substantially more rewrites of the text than even the most radical of cases ever made by MJ. This is proven by the simple fact that the character described by Paul most certainly never existed and that the character described by HJ appears nowhere in the writings of Paul.

In all these discussions, I just don't see how anyone gets around these facts.

Rick Sumner

This is, IMO, unrivalled as the strongest argument for mythicism. Whether it's true or not is another issue, but it's the most compelling point, and the hardest one to refute. The question, ultimately, is whether the "historical person" is "inserted" by the historicist, or "removed" by the mythicist.

Kevin, lest you think I'm neglecting your thought-provoking comments, I'm on my way out the door to "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth" here in the Stampede City, which is our plan for the next couple days at least. I'll try and comment on your post sooner than later, but it might end up being a couple days.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

Hi Ben:

Probably because there is no mythicist smoking gun. It's the totality of the understanding that convinces, as Jay observed. This is merely one tiny note.

The problem is that the definition of Powell et all doesn't apply, as you yourself note in the next paragraph. The issue is not the silence of a single historian/writer. The Pauline silences are not Pauline, they are early Christian silences. It is a silence throughout the record regardless of who is writing, and it follows a recognizable pattern. That is Earl's "argument from silence." A single historian or writer might not mention X, but non-mention of something throughout all the sources signals that something is (or is not) going on. That is the "argument from silence" that has to be dealt with.

By the time second half of the second century the Jesus tale was in full swing as historical fact, so I wouldn't expect the hesiologists to collect it -- further, it may not have had an identifiable religious group to adhere to it so that allegations that Jesus never lived may not have appeared interesting as possible competition. Finally, of course, the reason that mythicism never appeared in the collections of the 2 and 3 century is that -- surprise -- the mythicists had evolved into historicists who by their own accounts had always been historicists. Mythicism went extinct and the institutional memory was gone.

So I guess that makes me a recovered memory specialist. Damn, I knew this shit would land me in skeptical hot water.

Michael

Clivedurdle

Couple of points - my earlier reference to the current use of the name of Jesus - or power - has not been appreciated.

If the working assumption was of a Christ in the heavens who becomes Lord Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus or whatever and then someone else comes along and develops these stories to describe what this god did as a man - using the Hebrew Bible left right and centre like Daniel and Psalm 22 - and there is no one around to check this - we are talking decades later, there would be no heresy to rail against because the fully god fully man story is the accepted one!


There was a co-evolution of ideas going on - Christ and Messiah, Jesus and Joshua are interchangeable.

This is definitely a smoking gun - I did not want to state that because I was awaiting stronger arguments against that have not appeared.

As anthropologists look at modern tribes people to work out what earlier behaviours might have been, I think it is definitely looking at modern doctrines - like the pentecostal one of the name of Jesus - to work out what was going on.

Modern Pentecostals always say they are going back to the early church - I agree - to a myth driven emotional one described very well in the story of Pentecost in Acts of the Apostles and by Paul. One that added in gospel stories.

A religion in which an earthly Christ has always been an uncontroversial add on because what matters are the rituals and the ideas - the power of the name of Jesus for example. As I have said elsewhere the church was always full blown mythological fully god fully man until the enlightenment. It still is if you accept their words at face value.

gstafleu

As stated, such a construct is not falsifiable and hence methodologically invalid: what exactly the MinHJ is supposed to have done is not specified, so you can always jump to item B once item A is disproved.

To make it valid you'd have to specify for a particular MinHJ which "things usually ascribed to him" he actually did. Then you'd have to adduce evidence independent of the gospels/acts that he actually did so. Now perhaps actual proposed MinHJs do this, but we've had several threads that asked HJers to specify their model, and afaik nobody did so.

Gerard Stafleu