DCHindley

Perhaps he has been influenced by David Dungan, A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk) (1999)

Dungan "provides a clear and lively history of the strategies employed by Origen, Augustine, Erasmus, Spinoza, Locke, and others," and in the process "explain[s] the relationship between the rise of the modern historical-critical method of reading scripture (asking who wrote the books of the Bible, when, how, and for whom) and the creation and maintenance of political democracy--and furthermore, the ways in which fundamentalist "literal" readings of Scripture serve the same goal."


Hmmm ... Now I have actually read Dungan, who considers the contributions of renaissance scholarship as a total, and tragic, waste of intellect when the good ol' traditional methods expounded by Augustine, et al, especially as developed by conservatives (both Roman Catholic and Evangelicals), could easily have achieved the same exegetical goals without causing so much collateral damage to the faith of believers.

DCH (home for lunch, boss)

spin

The first two (I don't have a clear enough grasp of the Berossus fragments) are by their nature heterogeneous works. Where they are writing of their own times they are historians (yes, Josephus is clearly a biased historian giving his Jewish slant, but historians have never been free of a back-story), when they are passing on traditions they are well, you know tradents of sorts. It's more complicated of course, for example with Josephus who uses literary sources, some better than others for history, ie more verifiable and less evidently tradition.

When we talk about falsifiability, there are supposed to be more practical methods for falsifying. Not just waiting around for the possibility of something to pop up. :constern02:

I wasn't talking about specific problems and individuals per se, but as a reflection of a lack of awareness of the notion of history as we have it. I was complaining about your statement: "the assumptions that the writers had no interest in historicity is as flawed as the assumption that the writers were writing objective histories". Historicity is a modern notion which is to me inappropriate in the context of almost all ancient writers. We happily retroject the notion of "historical" onto people of the past, as though one should accept that they understand the fruit of centuries of historiography (from say the time of Gibbon -- though there were also glimmers from Polybius and Lucian). The difference between notions of a real person and of a historical one are commonly confused today. It is outside the ancient person's intellectual and cultural heritage. It's like trying to evince a conscious concept of psychology in an ancient literary work.

There isn't. You can only go on already available evidence. There must be some external yardstick. Plausibility is not a sufficient condition.

Then you seem to be using a sense of the word "history" here that doesn't have much content at all.

I hestitantly agree. I'd be more in favor of increased standards of sureness, rather than something as intellectual as a nascent standard of historiography. I'd agree that a rare individual like Polybius has the clarity of mind to have this nascent standard of historiography, but he shows an extremely rare appreciation of the task for the era. Lucian, "How (not) to write history", should help dull any zeal for a nascent standard.

Modern historians evaluate sources all the time, trying to select the grain of relevant historical source for a modern narrative stew. But then they have a relatively secure body of knowledge (starting with hard evidence such as epigraphy, statuary, etc., then incorporating related materials from writers of the era) as a working test bed for newly contemplated historical source materials. Without that body of knowledge, the task suddenly becomes very much harder, perhaps terminally harder. Text without context is unknown literature.

The realization that one could no longer simply mine the bible as a secure body of knowledge has knocked the legs off both biblical history and biblical archaeology. New testament scholars are basically unaware that there is a problem.

I can't really say anything about MJ methodology. I work on my own perceptions of historiography.

I'll answer "no" to your penultimate question, though lit. crit. is a necessary tool of every historian, and question most definitions of history.


spin

Solo

Jiri

Toto

I am starting to feel like Joseph Hoffman has the right idea. The debate over whether Jesus existed is close to pointless, and the more pointless it becomes, the more hostile.

I think that Richard Carrier's forthcoming book will clarify the debate (I don't think anything will ever settle it) but it won't be out until next year. Until then, remember the politicians' prayer "Dear Lord, please make my words today sweet and gentle, for tomorrow I might have to eat them."

Let me know when I can close this thread, or split out anything that deserves its own thread.

renassault

Actually I made the name before I was everything but a devout Christian because I thought it sounded cool..it sort of stuck I guess.

That's really interesting. What do you think?

renassault

It should be noted firstly, that you are very far from having established that there even is a myth in the biblical Christ. But as far as the historical Jesus, I don't think you can find a parallel in Hercules, especially with the developing church since the early 30's, (based on a mythical figure!) with arguments in the Church clearly coming from a higher authority (the arguments in the Gospels), which could hardly have been invented so quickly and have such wide traditions.

DCHindley

Back in the day, I used to own a Renassault Appliance (Motor Trend magazine's Car of the Year in 1983, the year I bought it) with a 5 speed manual, Bendix fuel injection, that got 30+ mpg and lived to 144,000 miles before falling apart in a pile of nuts and bolts around 1995.

That out of the way, I felt Dungan was more interested in apologetics than seriously investigating the synoptic problem. I read it through because at the time I had just finished Hayden V White's Metahistory, which looks at the way historians "emplot" historical data to help us interpret meaning from it. Hence my mention of Dungan' view that the renaissance was a tragedy for faith, because scholars didn't really have to go the way of rationalism if they only listened to Augustine etc etc. Tragedy is a plot device ...

Have you read it too?

DCH

badger3k

Personally, I'm leaning towards the MJ hypothesis for a variety of reasons, but I mainly wanted to chime in that there is better evidence for someone upon whom the arthur myth is based than the others. None of those cases give evidence for an HJ or any other historical figure, though - I agree with that. Each case has to be looked at under it's own merits and weight of evidence. For that, as you said, we need extrabiblical sources (or extra-Homeric for the Illiad, etc). That should just be good scholarship (and I would say, good science).
I also agree, although my point was one of definition. If there was a James Gordon, who didn't have anything to do with the police, who was the model for whom Bob Kane created the character of Commissioner Gordon, could we say there was a "Historical Gordon?" I don't think so. What if this Gordon (the real one) was a policeman, and more like the character - could we argue for an HG then? That, I'm not sure of. But if we tried to use Batman comics to argue for an HG, then I'd expect to get laughed at. But if it's a religious text...

Actually, the Batman series is a lot like the bible. Draws on multiple sources, multiple authors, written for a variety of purposes and audiences, rewritten multiple times...heck, even now Batman (Bruce Wayne, that is) is supposedly dead (in one world, he exists in multiple parallel worlds), but I'm pretty sure that he'll be back from the dead (especially since some of the stories are a bit confusing and can indicate that he is not really dead, but that's a whole 'nuther topic).

badger3k

That is the problem. Studies done on societies with primarily Oral histories and stories do not value accuracy, but often freely change the story to fit what they were saying and who they were saying it to. History bends to the telling. The old idea of an oral history being a true history turns out to be sadly mistaken. Come to think of it, I think I know some of the people who regularly mix up all of that, though they are usually on the new age side of the fence, or maybe postmodernist "we make our own truth/reality/bacon" :wave: people.

ETA: studies in neuorscience and memory have also shown the problems with memory, both in our recall of actual events and for lists of things, that runs counter to the idea of a "perfect memory" when records have to be kept in your head.

renassault

No I haven't read it, but it's a very interesting suggestion that I saw in your description. I don't know if he's correct that the advances in science, etc., would have happened if there was no Renaissance and had listened to Augustine instead.