Vorkosigan

1. The earliest Christian documents appear to contain few, if any, pieces of information on the life of Jesus.

2. The narratives of his life appear to be constructed from the Old Testament and other extant Jewish and Christian sources.

3. The narratives of his life make extensive use of conventions from Hellenistic historical fiction.

4. The letters of Paul appear to make extensive use of conventions from Hellenisitic epistolary fiction.

5. Scholars do not possess reliable and generally accepted methods for recovering historical data from the narratives.

Given that no early information on Jesus' life exists, later narratives appear to be wholly fictional, and scholarly methodology lacks validity, Jesus did not exist.

Note that this is "internal" -- there is no reference to the lack of mention of Jesus in the "external sources" such as Josephus et al. That is superfluous to any real argument about Jesus.

Neil, you need to post your epistolary fiction review here. I need to work up my essay on Mark and Hellenistic historical fiction.

Vorkosigan

gstafleu

I don't know if this is a rebuttal, but if your posting is supposed to be a rephrase of mine (don't know if that's your intention), it isn't a very good one: it leaves a large part of the argument out (no evidence, sun worship) and then restates what is left as a syllogism. The syllogism bit is fine, but you can't just leave out the rest . (But then maybe you didn't intend this as a rephrase, if so I apologize in advance.)

Gerard Stafleu

Heidi Guedel

This is THEIR OWN CRITERIA, so by definition it must "hold water".

NOR have these things happened since.

Which also proves that Jesus does not continue to exist, as Christians continue to believe. And if Jesus was supposedly capable of reappearing to his followers, as reported in the road to Emmaus story, he should thereafter have presented himself as the proven Messiah and immortal King of the Jews, governed wisely, saved Israel and caused it to exist forever in peace and security. Obviously this did not occur.

In addition:

No scientific evidence has ever existed in support of conception occuring without the union of sperm and ovum... at least prior to the current experiments in cloning. And hasn't cloning always duplicated the female DNA donor?

Therefore, a male "messiah" who was conceived w/o union of sperm and ovum, and who has survived biological death to rise again and fulfill the OT prophecies did/does not exist.

Solo

Does not work, Peter ! If you say "therefore" you are expressing logical, automatic, consequence of a statement or a series of statements. The probability of something cannot crossdress as logical necessity. You may say: "In conclusion, Jesus propbably did not exist".

Jiri

gstafleu

This contribution goes back to the discussion that if you posit an HJ, you have to specify what model.

The OP doesn't define "Jesus." So here is an argument that addresses that, in the syllogistic form favoured by Peter: no less than 2 1/2 (two real and one implied) syllogisms :

1. When talking about Christianity the only Jesus that makes sense is the full blown gospel one: it is this Jesus that defines Christianity, and Christianity is the reason we are talking about Jesus in the first place.
   
2. In addition to making sense, reducing Jesus to something that isn't contradicted by available evidence is methodologically dubious to say the least.
   
3. Therefore we have to consider the full blown gospel Jesus.
   
4. Science has established with sufficient certainty that supernatural phenomena do not exist.
   
5. The gospel Jesus we have to consider (from 3) is clearly stated as performing a variety of super natural acts, and is thus a supernatural phenomenon himself.
   
6. Therefore Jesus does not exist.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

Here is an argument of the type "We know people believe in nonsense, Jesus looks an awful lot like this nonsense, so he is nonsense." What I'll add to the argument is some scientific back-up. The argument thus adds something that we don't often see on BC&H: "hard" science can throw some light on the question of how and why the Bible came into existence.

1. Science has established that people are prone to believe in unreal things. Evidence for this from the realm of clinical psychology can be found in The Corruption of Reality by John Schumaker. Evidence from the realm of neuropsychology can be found in Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs by Michael Persinger.
   
2. Christianity and Jesus fit well into the kind of unreal things that science has shown people believe in.
   
3. Therefore Christianity and Jesus are unreal.
   
4. Therefore Jesus did not exist.

A two-stage syllogism, no less. Does it get any better?

Gerard Stafleu

lpetrich

I'll include a summary of Earl Doherty's case - http://www.jesuspuzzle.com/ - in mine:

1. Hellenistic Jews often believed in a Divine Intermediary: Wisdom (sophia) or The Word (logos).
2. Pagan drying and rising savior gods were common.
3. Paul's Christ was mostly heavenly; Paul seemed ignorant of many of the details of the Gospels, including many that would have been convenient for him.
4. Mark was likely an extended allegory assembled from Old Testament quotes.
5. Matthew and Luke include "Q", more a collection of sayings than a biography; they also include two totally different genealogies and a virgin-birth story.
6. Jesus Christ's trial is out of character in several ways, and he dies fast by crucifixion-victim standards.
7. Founder figures often get mythologized or even invented.
8. Jesus Christ fits Lord Raglan's Mythic Hero profile closely enough (19 out of 22) for some people to charge that it was invented to discredit his historicity.
9. He fits an additional feature of mythic heroes: prophecy fulfillment.
10. Philo and Josephus say little or nothing about him, despite their interest in describing eccentric sects and self-styled prophets, and despite Jesus Christ's celebrity and notoriety.
11. Early Xians had a great variety of beliefs, which suggests a movement that gradually emerged rather than being founded.
12. Therefore, Jesus Christ did not exist.

rlogan

With all due respect Peter, it is not constructed usefully.

What "Jesus" are you talking about? For the Gospel Jesus it is trifling:

The gospels allege Jesus performed supernatural miracles, eg returning from the dead.

Supernatural miracles, particularly coming back from the dead, are by definition impossible using standards of science.

Therefore the Jesus alleged in the gospels did not exist, by standards of science.


*************************

Now, the "Historical Jesus" camp replaces the gospel Jesus with some unidentified version (eg an obscure itinerant Jesus who was crucified and subsequently encrusted with legends).

This hypothetical Jesus is constructed specifically to defy falsification and therefore cannot be falsified logically.

For every piece of evidence submitted that implies rejection of some gospel element or for every demonstration that there is an alternative explanation, the "historical Jesus" is merely modified to explain away the problems.

There is very little practical difference between the bulk of the "Jesus myth" and "historical Jesus" camps. The only question is how much of the gospel accounts are mythical as opposed to absolute fact.

It is absurd, really, to have these acrimonious debates over whether there was "some person named Jesus" that existed. Because by the time of the second century and beyond the whole religious construct of "Jesus Christ" was so far removed from any scientific reality that it makes no difference.

List the primary features of this Jesus Christ insofar as what was important religiously. Came back from the dead. Believing in him is what forgives your sins and gets you to heaven. Etc.

All of those things are total bullshit scientifically. And that leaves the "Historical Jesus" and "Mythical Jesus" camps merely arguing about how the most essential things about Jesus, which are mythical, arose.


In sum, because you have not defined "Jesus", and the standard by which logical rejection is to be made, the "game" is not productive insofar as the main argumenst about Jesus are concerned.

In my field of statistics, the null and alternative hypotheses must be rigorously defined. And the most important parallel is in what we call "Model Selection Criteria".

In this area, two alternative explanations must compete with each other directly. Loosely speaking it is the argument from best explanation.

And in such a scenario, for example, almost any version of the "historical Jesus" beats the gospels flat. Almost any version version of the "mythical Jesus" beats the gospels flat.

But head-to-head competition against one another is another story. Statistically speaking, it is impossible for models that are in reality merely slightly different versions of each other to outperform one another so dramatically as to call for rejection at a high level of significance.

Cheers.

Peter Kirby

rlogan: Your contribution is the best response I've seen thus far. Thank you.

Could you suggest another game that we could play, with a similar purpose but which avoids the most critical faults of the game proposed in the OP?

kind regards,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

Exactly. As I've maintained for some time now, the "historical core" scenario is unscholarly because it cannot be refuted. No matter how much evidence you gather to show otherwise, the historicist can always shrink the Core Jesus to accommodate it. Off to post more on this later.

Michael