mountainman

Evidence in the field of ancient history is the final arbitur IMO.

C14 may yet establish that the fabrication of the Galilaeans was indeed a fiction of men created by wickedness in a specific century not the first.

Best wishes,


Pete

bacht

Fair enough. I studied history as an undergrad, never worked in the field. My apologies if I offended any professionals here.

I was responding to aa5874's suggestion that Biblical scholars are less than objective in their interpretation of the materials we have. Those who see a mythic Jesus in the evidence, such as Doherty, have suggested the same thing. I don't know how to evaluate such a claim, but human nature being what it is, the potential for intellectual dishonesty must be acknowledged.

Roger Pearse

I should make clear that I am merely an interested amateur myself.

I think there are several issues here.

Firstly does the historicity of Jesus depend on a judgement requiring specialised technical skills, of which biblical scholars are the only possible judges and whose authority could not sensibly be challenged by anyone else? I would suggest no and no; the data is widely available directly to us all, and scholars of ancient history would equally legitimately have a view also, if authority was claimed.

Secondly, is it the case that in the humanities in general scholarship proceeds, uninfluenced by controversy or the political or religious wishes of those who control university appointments? This question, I suspect, has only to be stated to be refuted; we all know that the humanities can be very subjective at times, and the history of sociology and of economics gives ghastly examples of high claims to authority combined with the grossest political motivations.

I believe that, on matters of political and religious controversy, scholars write as men; and men of their own time and class. We can hardly suppose that it is otherwise.

The question, then, is whether the existence of Jesus is a matter of controversy in the world at large, in which biblical scholars could have some vested interest. It does not seem to me to be a matter of controversy; those attacking it all evidently do so from motives of religious animosity, and aside from this bunch of cranks, no-one else considers the question even worth discussing. If this is a conspiracy, it is one not confined to biblical scholars.

Considering the quantity of objections by Christians to the conclusions of biblical scholarship, the wildness of some of those conclusions, and the idea that bibical scholars would be reluctant to debunk the existence of Jesus seems one that would require proof rather than merely assertion?

But perhaps others could put this better.

Surely. On matters of politics and religion, I suggest that we must all invest the time to grapple with the raw data. It is unreasonable to expect of the humanities what it is not structured to deliver.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

bacht

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I don't want to derail this into a discussion of academic integrity, but the idea that the subject matter of Biblical studies has special significance to our culture seems obvious to me.

As far as professionals and amateurs evaluating the same material, I have to put my money on the pros. Of course they are not infallible, but by reason of training and experience I accept the presumption of their higher qualification to reach usable conclusions on many of the issues. One of the problems with ancient history is the lack of evidence, so there is a lot of wiggle room for speculation. I still assume that professionals will make better guesses most of the time.

aa5874

What I am suggesting is that a person who is called a Biblical scholar may also be a missionary, an evangelist, a minister or a convert trying to win souls for Jesus, and such persons may be TERRIFIED to investigate or make known any evidence that can show Jesus NEVER existed.

bacht

I guess the worst-case scenario would be something like this: excavators, curators, translators, literary critics etc have all conspired to maintain the orthodox version of the Bible and suppress contradictory evidence or interpretations. Conspiracy theories always have some plausibility but a lot of loose ends to explain yes?

The good news is that Western scholars seem to have done more work de-bunking our own religious tradition than other other academic traditions have attempted, like the Moslems (?)

Zaphod

As an newly interested amateur, I have been reading many threads here in the BC&H section for several months, and would first like to thank all participants here for what has been a glorious bit of theater, a remarkably erudite discussion, and some important scholarship.

Toto, you are about the most patient, most well-informed, and helpful moderator I have found anywhere on the web- heartfelt kudos.

The more I read here, the more evident it becomes that this is a very difficult field of study, that really requires fluency in many languages, a wide ranging knowledge of widely scattered and voluminous sources, and intimacy with virtually every liberal arts science. I bow my head to so many of you here, and what you all bring to the table.

I have a biology background, and have worked in basic research, so the scientific method is not unknown to me. And while I make absolutely no claims to any kind of biblical scholarship, I do have a concern that has been doing its best to cause me chime in all these months. Like a scene from Alien, the little incubus has decided to be born:

On the subject of the historicity of Jesus, I must say that the discussion continues to have the wrong framing.

When I first encountered the Argument from Silence, I was astounded. I'm sure most people were pretty shocked when confronted by the deafening dearth of expected evidence of the existence of the Historical Jesus.

It has been with some dismay, that I see that with time, there is a propensity to make the familiar the mundane. That is, the extraordinary significance of the Argument from Silence becomes compartmentalized into the Problem of Silence. And the field moves on.

But it seems to me that by doing so, the field has missed an important point. And that has to do with the burden of proof. That extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is true even in the realm of biology. And, it seems to me, that the idea of a Historical Jesus despite the Argument of Silence, is a claim that requires extraordinary proof.

The difficulties of the field of Biblical scholarship only serve to increase the demand for proof. For not only do we have the problems derived from the Argument of Silence itself, but we are left with the sorry problem that the apologetic sources are rife with evidence of historic revisionism. And, with a strong case presented for the Mythical Jesus put forward by Doherty, the proper framing of the question of a historical Jesus, it seems to me should, ne, must be one along the lines of:

The historicity of Jesus must properly be assumed to be false, until enough significant evidence can be provided to reasonably prove this hypothesis false.


I think it is important that, on this small topic, intellectual honesty must prevail. Given recent scholarship, and archaeological and C14 evidence, the meme promulgated by legions of apologetic theologians that there is a "consensus" on the historicity of Jesus can not be allowed to stand unchallenged. Rather, it seems to me, that the proper framing of the issue by serious historians should more closely resemble the one I suggested above.

aa5874

My post is not any conspiracy theory, it is reality.

There are scholars who may be missionaries, evangelists, ministers and converts who are just trying to win souls for Jesus. You must take that into consideration when these scholars make pronouncements about the history of Jesus. These scholars are, in effect, working for Jesus and expect a reward.

Clivedurdle

:notworthy:

I think there is real evidence for myth, like xianity being called an oriental cult, the Megiddo excavation with the words the god Jesus, and the work of Freke and Gandy which I consider to be very important for opening the question of the gnostic roots.

A wonderful marinade of One God ideas from Zarathustra, picked up by superb story tellers in creating their national myth (who saw the play last night about putting God on trial?).

Bible Unearthed shows how Abraham and Moses are myth, David and Solomon were only local warlords. What is the problem with a Jewish cult or Paul repeating the trick on a larger scale?

I think we have now actually moved to debating how the myth developed.

andrewcriddle

Which specific writers would you have expected to mention Jesus but fail to do so ?

Andrew Criddle