gurugeorge

They obviously don't unquestioningly "accept the canon", but they do obviously unquestioningly accept the Canon as evidence of someone.

Or can you, with your overwhelmingly greater familiarity with the field, point me to any serious attempts by NT scholars to justify the use of the NT as evidence of some person's existence?

I thought not.

No, the truth of y would be dependent on external corroboration outside the cultic documents. Can you show me where NT scholars have attempted to prove, without circularly using the cult's texts, that there was a man, y, before they tried to prove (e.g.) how the myth in the cult's texts might have accreted around that man?

Well if there isn't there bloody well should be!

In his general (though qualified) acceptance of Walter Bauer's ideas, which I put together with other things to reach a more radical conclusion than Ehrman does (give him time though ). Check my posting history and you'll see slightly more detailed outlines I posted here a few months ago. (Still not hugely detailed I'm afraid, this is just an ongoing minor pastime for me, so a detailed analysis will be a long time coming, if at all.)

I don't think I misrepresented your point at all, I directly addressed it by pulling the rug out from under it. Augustus might not have existed. If the only mention we had of "Augustus" was in Virgil, then at the very least we'd have to be Augustus-agnostic.

The only mention we have of this "Jesus Christ" entity is in the cultic documents of Christianity (please don't bother me with any twaddle about Josephus, Tacitus and all the rest of those supposed contemporary corroborations, let's be serious here). So why aren't NT scholars at the very least, Jesus-agnostics? That would be the most intellectually respectable position, and would form a reasonable baseline for NT scholarship. Then you could reasonably have arguments like "well, if there was a guy with such-and-such characteristics - a psychedelic-mushroom-munching revolutionary, say - then this is how he might have come to be viewed in such-and-such a way (as a God-man of a certain type at a certain period in Christian history, and amongst a certain group of Christians), and you can interpret some of the NT as indirectly referring to a just such a psychedelic-mushroom-munching revolutionary if you squint at it thus-and-so." That would be reasonable (although of course inconclusive until you can independently corroborate the existence of your psychedelic-mushroom-munching revolutionary).

But what you actually get in NT scholarship (so far as I can see) is a direct leap to (e.g.), "if you squint at the NT thus-and-so, you can see that it was talking about a psychedelic-mushroom-munching revolutionary, argal Jesus was a psychedelic-mushroom-munching revolutionary." That's not scholarship, it's a joke, it's crank scholarship, immensely more sophisticated, but essentially no more intellectually respectable, than von Daniken, Castaneda or Dan Brown.

I was thinking of stuff external to the cult generally, as well as the NT specifically. What you don't want to do is take a cult's word for anything; not that you set out disbelieving, but you suspend belief till there's some clue from elsewhere (other writers, archaeology, etc., etc.).

Clearly part of the reason for the selection of the NT Canon is that it's the most coherent set of gospels those responsible for its formation could find to cobble together given the requirement that Jesus be both God and man at the same time (some of the ongoing debates in the refinement of the Canon over time canvassed by Ehrman show this). There were lots of gospels floating around, but the set of coherent ones that could at least look at first glance like they might be independently corroborating witness reports of a God-man was pretty small (in relation to the larger mass of cult texts).

But again, it's a pretty irrelevant point. Cast the net wider, the "Jesus" variants look even more incoherent, even less like they're based around a person, and more like the flowering of myth around an idea.

gurugeorge

"Some" NT authors, Jeffrey, "some". I've been careful to qualify all along. I think some of the NT stuff is easily late enough to be toeing the party line of the God-man idea that was firmly entrenched in some reasonable majority of Churches - orthodoxy - (certainly Luke and John out of the gospels, although they may be based on older texts that don't have such a supposition); but some of it, Mark, maybe Matthew, the letters of Paul, Hebrews, etc., bits and pieces here and there, seem to be either literary productions, theological harmonizations of literary productions, or evidence of a mythic "value revalued" Christ as I outlined. Or at the very least, not themselves documents which originally claim to be evidence of a God-man. So it's a mixed bag, tied together in order to be evidence of a God-man, some of which seems to claim internally to be evidence of a God-man, some of which doesn't seem to claim that, and doesn't even claim to be evidence of a man (as in "I knew this fellow once ... ") at all.

You've got to be careful, too, with the lateness of the actual physical documents we have. In actual fact, all we have apart from a few tiny fragments (IIRC, please correct me if I'm wrong) are post-300 documents. (cue Mountainman! )

Jeffrey Gibson

Why should anyone, let alone NT scholars, do this when the writings in the NT are, at least prima facie evidence of "someone's" (and not just the texts' authors!) and when you haven't given any reason to think otherwise..

Show me one serious classical scholar who doesn't think so or who thinks that the attempt to show that the NT is prima facie evidence of someone's existence is in any way necessary.

The writings of the NT may not be good evidence, they may not be sufficient evidence. But unless you want to take Peter Brown's ludicrous position that all NT writings are 4th century forgeries -- they are most definitely evidence.

Perhaps you'll point me to some serious attempt by serious classical scholars to justify the use of Plato as evidence for some person's existence. Or better, explain to me why this is not done.

JG

Roger Pearse

It is a serious mistake to suppose that those who disagree with our religious opinions are our intellectual inferiors.

All you're doing here is playing games with definitions as an excuse to ignore data. This doesn't impress me, nor, I suspect, anyone else. I don't know why you bother.

Are demands for extraordinary evidence for things we do not wish to believe distinguishable from prejudice?

(Long reiteration snipped)

You are mistaken.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Magdlyn

What the heck inspired you to make that comment? I think you're running out of arguments, Roger.

You're on a skeptic board, Roger. I think you're probably incorrect. I see clearly George isn't redefining anything. He's just demanding people put up actual evidence for an actual man (since there is no evidence for anything supernatural.) Simply put, put up or shut up.

This is not about belief. When you come to that word, I see you're out of arguments about actual evidence and just preaching.

GakuseiDon

Jeffery Jay Lowder is a cofounder and Past President of Internet Infidels, who writes on historical criticism issues. Lowder examined whether the New Testament provides prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. He looks at some criteria of independent confirmation, and concludes here:

"There simply is nothing epistemically improbable about the mere existence of a man named Jesus. (Just because Jesus existed does not mean that he was born of a virgin, that he rose from the dead, etc.) Although a discussion of the New Testament evidence is beyond the scope of this paper, I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament "the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material," we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed."

gurugeorge

Indeed it is Roger, indeed it is.

Ignore data? Everything I'm saying is all about how to use the NT canon and early Christian writings as data. You're clutching at straws Roger.

Had I been out to impress anybody, your comment might have some point.

I have no problem with the idea of a God-man living in Palestine circa 1-30 CE at all Roger, none at all. I'm also quite open to the idea that the myth of a God-man might have grown around some obscure fellow, some revolutionary, preacher, or whatever. What I'm not, is satisfied that the field of NT scholarship has done enough intellectual groundwork to justify the idea that the cultic corpus of Christianity is or contains satisfactory proof of either of these ideas; nor am I convinced that NT scholarship has taken the "man mythologised" route on the basis that alternative possibilities have been considered and rejected with any degree of intellectual seriousness.

Thanks for your thoughtful, considered analysis. :notworthy:

GakuseiDon

What alternative possibilities have been presented with any degree of intellectual seriousness? I'm not aware of anything recently. Doherty and Acharya both publish in the popular press, and Price hasn't written on an ahistorical Jesus in the professional sphere AFAIK. So what are the alternative possibilities?

spin

Popularist appeals are rather weak, don't you think?

Show me one serious historian who has written a thesis arguing on primary evidence that Jesus was in fact a historical figure. See, it's easy.

When you cannot date them, what are they evidence of, other than for some unknown time when the texts were written?

Your fundamental problem in arguing here, is that you cannot even say what the nt writings are actually evidence for. You don't know what genre the texts are. You don't know who wrote them. You don't really know anything about what the writers were privy to. So, thrill us by saying what exactly they are evidence for. You can't simply take the cushy way all the time. You can't always just sit in the audience and throw tomatoes. You have your chance to get on stage. Do something. Show us what you can do.

The nt writings "are most definitely evidence", of what exactly?? (And naturally you'll supply all the epistemological necessities, won't you?)


spin

gurugeorge

BZZZZZTTTT!!!! Not an NT scholar then.

But, seriously, Mr Lowder seems to be mistaken, for he makes the very mistake I'm talking about himself right here in the paragraph before the one you quote:

I therefore suggest that we think of the 'historicity of Jesus' as meaning 'whether the Jesus of the New Testament is based upon a person who actually lived' and not 'whether this person did the deeds the New Testament claims he did.'

Sorry, but that suggestion doesn't make any sense at all, and is itself simply question-begging. The idea that "the Jesus of the New Testament is based upon a person who actually lived" is not the most obvious or logical, or even only alternative when the God-man with all his miracles is thrown out the window.

Just because a bunch of writing is presented as a "Testament" doesn't mean it is a testament. It could be all sorts of things - lies, literary or theological constructs, fantasy, myth, etc. Do we have any reason, as rationalists, to take any of those other options into consideration? Well, these aren't eyewitness accounts of some event taken down by a policeman, they are, after all, the documents of a religious cult. That doesn't mean they are lies, fantasy or myth, but those must surely be live options for any rationalist - as well as the consideration that they might have been mythopoeia based around some real person.

There's no point pussyfooting around religious sensibilities here. Enough damage has already been done to religious sensibilities by pooh-poohing the God-man and his miracles. One is hardly going to do any more damage by taking the full spectrum of possibilities into account before plumping for the man mythologised (if that's how the cookie crumbles).