gurugeorge

Oh it's not that I'm distancing myself from social implications, it's that I know that most of the social implications - i.e. consequences - of what I say are unknown and unintended, and I don't have the hubris to pretend I know what I don't know.

But since everyone's in the same boat, that "cancels out", as it were - life is somewhat of an adventure for all of us, and while we may do our best to ensure good things flow from our sayings and doings, and not bad things, it is notoriously the case that we may not even be assured of good things flowing from our deeds and actions, even if we sincerely wish it were so - "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions", as the saying goes.

Hegelianism in sociopolitical thought is no more than suggestive, it's not worth basing programmes of action on.

gurugeorge

Btw, what's so f*****g funny about pygmies? Are we so unconsiously racist here that we can't conceive of deep philosophical things coming from a tribe of small people in Africa?

I haven't read her stuff about that so I can't say whether she makes a good case or not, but nothing about the notion strikes me as apriori absurd - Egypt is part of Africa, after all, and a fair proportion of what we talk about has historical roots in Egypt (e.g. Osiris ffs).

gurugeorge

After re-reading the above in the light of spin's salutary warnings in the post above, I realise I do actually often use the word "historical" in what spin calls a "loose" sense. Nothing wrong with that per se, or in general, except on a board like this, perhaps.

So a stricter version of the above:-

GDon, there are two things at issue here:-

1) what evidence do we have for what people believed? and

2) what evidence do we have for the existence of either a) a divine god-man, or b) a human being who might have given rise to the myth of a divine god-man?

I think your beef with Doherty is mainly in the "what did people believe?" department. But I don't think that's as important a question, wrt finding out who existed, as either of you think.

To start with, it's pretty clear that wihile some people might have been quite rationalist (or Ebionites! ) and taken an euhemeristic tack even in those days, a big chunk of people believed a), of various sorts.

i.e. they believed in the existence, in the past, of a divine god-man ("historical" in spin's loose sense). That's the intention (in the philosophical sense) of the stories, that's what the internal logic of the stories is directed to, points at.

They did actually believe he existed in the past. That's clear. What's not so clear is the precise content of the "he" - whether some "vapour form" or something that merely looked like flesh and blood, or something that was flesh and blood mysteriously imbued with divinity, or whatever.

Now of course these questions do have intrinsic antiquarian interest - we want to know what people in fact believed, and we want to have a purview of what people believed that's historically accurate (i.e. supportable by the evidence we have).

But the real nub of the matter is:- to what extent do variations in what people believed (let's say, on the "vapour form"/flesh spectrum, or any number of axes like that, such as "it occured in some 'Buffy-like realm'/it occured here on Earth") - to what extent do these variations affect the evidence for an euhemeristic origin to the myth (i.e. to b) above, the man mythified)?

As I showed in my "Paul" example (and as an aside, I think this type of experience is actually the main cause of religion), if someone has a vision, and the visionary being tells them he did some stuff in the past, then to that person, that is likely to be evidentiary - to that person, the entity will be, roughly in our modern sense, "historical", i.e. supported by that person's experience, the evidence of (what they think is) their senses. They will really believe that that entity existed in the past - after all, it told them about itself.

If that person then tells other people, then depending on the level of trust, they in turn may think that entity actually existed in the past ("historical" in the loose sense), if they trust the visionary as a source of evidence (i.e. if they are sufficiently charismatic and convincing).

And so on and so forth. A similar chain could be constructed for the hypothesis that there was a preacher (obviously eyeballing a physical person is a strong form of evidence - as the Pseudo Clementines point out, and that's a HUGE giveaway wrt the the purpose and function of the concept of the apostolic succession, and the whole Luke/Acts rigmarole - and then the chain goes on trust after that, just like the visionary chain).

But a similar chain could also be constructed for a literary work that someone just made up - e.g. suppose GMark was intended as a literary farce, a skit, or some sort of critique of the Jews, using either a non-existent mythical figure (of the "Paul" type) or a historical figure (of the "man mythified" type), and then for some reason, large numbers of interested parties came to believe it was the correct account of that entity's doings (probably simply because it's a damn good story).

Now in any of these cases, phrases like "born of the line of David" could easily appear. Even in the "Paul" case if "Paul" believed the entity he was talking to was totally "vapour form" of some kind, still and all, the entity told him that he appeared in the past, in flesh like "Paul"'s.

So (and here's the main point) such phrases as "born of the line of David", etc., are not sufficient to establish an euhemeristic origin for this particular myth. At most, they establish that some fleshly aspect to the STORY was accepted by some early Christians. Both any number of mythicist variant Jesuses and any number of historicist variant Jesuses could have this phrase in their biographies.

As I said above, what you really need to establish euhemerism, is some personal-contact giveaways in the text (e.g. my paradigm example "James told me that Jesus had said to him ...").

And the real problem is there's nothing like that in the "Paul" writings.

Now appearances can be saved for the historicist picture; but such explanations tend to be strained and tend to pretend insight into "Paul"'s psychology; so it's not at all irrational, silly or beyond the bounds of reason, to go with alternative hypotheses - various ahistoricist positions, including various mythicist ones.

Of course I favour the "it all began with visions and perfervid Scripture-poring" idea, and I take "Paul" to be saying what he says on the tin - nobody he's talking about personally knew anybody called "Jesus", what they are all talking about at THAT stage of the Christian game, is "The Messiah" seen through an alternative conception of "The Messiah" (i.e. that he'd already been in the past, rather than being someone to wait for or expect now; and that he was a spiritual victor rather than a military victor), and their evidence for this - the reason why they think this entity was both "historical" in the loose sense (i.e. truly existed), and historical in the strict sense (was supported by evidence convincing enough for them), is because a) they thought that there was a hidden record of the Messiah's past doings - his coming in obscurity, foolling the Archons, and being crucified, and resurrecting - in Scripture ("according to Scripture"), and b) they had visions of him.

If you go with this hypothesis, then the sudden (right from the early 2nd century) luxuriant bloom of variation and later (towards the end of the 2nd century) tightening up by a "proto-orthodoxy", as evidenced by Walter Bauer, is quite natural and requires no added hypotheses like the historicist hypothesis does (e.g. assumptions about "Paul"'s psychology, or about "oral tradition") - it's just what you'd expect from something that was pretty loose and vague to begin with anyway. And as time went on, you see a natural confabulation and filling in of pseudo-history for this entity.

Simply put, the Christ idea was somewhat like a "New Age" type of thing - pretty loose and vague to begin with in overall terms (although little groups of the varied believers might have been quite tenacious about what their intuitions and visions told them about what "the Messiah" - under this novel conception - did and said, and when, etc.).

That, to me, is far more of a natural reading of the evidence than readings that assume various things about why evidence of personal knowing of an ordinary human being would be both missing from the contemporary external record and lacking in terms of internal giveaways (apart from the sole instance of the rather dubious "Lord's brother").

Doug Shaver

I know that many skeptics are convinced that Eusebius was nothing but a bald-faced liar from the get-go. Just for the record, I'm not one of them.

I think it quite sufficient for defending the skeptical position about anything Eusebius wrote that he doesn't tell us where he got his information, whenever that happens to be the case.

andrewcriddle

Compared to other ancient writers Eusebius is rather good at telling us where he claims to have got his information.

Andrew Criddle

Sheshbazzar

Problem is uncertainly as to whether his claimed 'sources' were genuine, and even if they were, whether what he wrote was an accurate accounting of their words and views, or an 'edited', 'incorporated', distorting reflection of his own biases.

Unless one's version of 'Christianity' demands it, there is no reason to 'bet the farm' on any of the claims of Eusebius.

Solo

This is complete hogwash ! I hope everyone can see that there is no relationship shown among the color boxes spin created. Can you see that ? There are simply two categories set side by side with the negation to each shoved underneath. One cannot talk about proportion among them without sounding lunatic.

Insofar as I can fathom spin's methodological sorcery, there appears to be -somewhere in the background- an obssessional need to deny historical reality of people or things he (as a supporter of the brights) disappoves of. To that end he construes a scheme which divides past reality into 'historical' and 'real', depending on whether we have reliable information about the historical objects. If we do have, say, a multiple attestation of them, then they are pronounced 'historical', if not then they are merely entities and events 'believed to have existed'. Logical relationships between the objects which establish a degree of their historical probability are - to quote the American thinker of the month, pastor Terry Jones -of the devil.

This would make - thanks to GDon for flushing out elegantly this quirk of spin - Pilate's father 'real' but not 'historical'. We have no information about him, ergo he has no historical substance: he is merely assumed to have had existence.

Buit this is completely stupid nomenclatura, isn't it ?

Pilate biological father's historicity is established beyond reasonable doubt by the dint of the fact that Pilate himself has been established as a historical figure. There is absolutely no need to postulate another category, ie. relegate Pilate's ancestry to some layaway class of historical non-persons. He was real and he was historical. That we don't know anything further about him, historically speaking, does not make one iota of difference to the historical reality of his existence - unless of course one takes a patently unreasonable stand noetically, like bishop Berkeley e.g.

Best,
Jiri

GakuseiDon

It does sound that way, but only because we are used to thinking of "historicity" as being synonymous with "real". I've checked some definitions of the word, and it gives two:
(a) the quality of being part of recorded history, as opposed to prehistory
(b) the quality of being part of history as opposed to being ahistorical myth or legend

Spin is using it in the sense of "(a)". Toto, I presume you are also? It seems that everyone else is using it in the sense of "(b)". I think that spin raises a fair point, and I appreciate him explaining it. But given how the word is commonly used on this board (as synonymous with "real"), and given the common usage seems to fit the definition of the word, I will continue to use it that way as well.

But if we use historicity in the sense of "b", isn't that saying the same thing? "He was real and he was historical"? Should we distinguish between those two terms?

On the other hand, "part of recorded history" is oxymoronic, if "history" is defined as that which is recorded. Add to that the word "verifiable", and most of "history" disappears. For myself, I will continue to use "historicity" as synonymous with "real", until common usage dictates otherwise. But I think spin has raised a valid point about how we use that word.

GakuseiDon

I think this board uses it in the sense of being synonymous with 'real', and since that appears to be part of the definition, there's no issue using it that way.

I tend to agree. I think there is very little evidence for a historical :blush: Jesus, and questioning his existence is quite valid. But we CAN read the literature and make assessments about what they thought back then, and see if new paradigms fit within that data. But I agree that that is separate to the question of the evidence of a HJ.

I'm not sure how "euhemeristic" fits into this. It's the idea that the stories of the gods were attributable to the deification of historical heroes. I don't think that is a term that can be used of any ancient Christians. Those who saw him as just a man (as perhaps some Ebionites did) weren't taking an "euhemeristic" view. Those who saw him as a man who, by living a perfect life, was resurrected and raised to heaven (like Paul) weren't taking an "euhemeristic" view. Those who thought that he was the Logos who had existed since the beginning of time (like Second Century Christians) weren't taking an "euhemeristic" view. Perhaps some modern Christians do; but I can't see anyone in the past expressing that viewpoint.

Yes, I agree it's possible.

Yes, that's possible also, though I think you should say "spiritual body" rather than "vapour form". They generally thought that there were four elements: earth, water, air and fire. Air and fire were thought to be spiritual substances, so most seemed to think that a "spiritual body" was made from air and/or fire. That's why they could float in the air. Earth-bound spirits had some water or earth in their bodies, which is why they hovered around cemeteries. (Some thought that there was "aether" which was a fifth element, though generally that element was thought to exist in the heavens rather than on earth.)

I agree, it is a real problem for historicists.

From the perspective of "how did they think back then?" I see nothing wrong with what you've posted here.

aa5874

But, that is EXACTLY how it is known that Eusebius is NOT credible.

Eusebius was rather good at making FALSE claims about his so-called sources.

For example, Eusebius claimed the supposed Gospel writer called Mark preached and set up churches in Alexandria during the time of Philo and that Philo did write about the supposed Gospel writer called Mark.

No such information can be found anywhere in ALL the extant writings of Philo. ZERO.

Examine the FALSE claims about Philo by Eusebius in "Church History" 2.16.1-2 Philo, in all extant 44 books, did NOT write ONE single thing about JESUS, MARK, a Messiah called Jesus, or followers of a Messiah called Jesus or churches in Alexandria where people worshiped a Messiah called Jesus.

ZERO. Eusebius is NOT credible.

Eusebius again made a False claim or implication regarding Philo when he claimed that there was a tradition that Philo met a supposed apostle of Jesus called Peter in Rome.

"Church History" 2.17.1. Again, in ALL 44 extant books of Philo there is NO mention of a supposed apostle called Peter anywhere or that Philo met an apostle called Peter in Rome or anywhere during Philo's lifetime.

It is CLEAR that Eusebius used KNOWN figures of history, like Philo, to "historize" his FICTION about supposed characters Mark and Peter.

Eusebius does have a HISTORY which shows that he is NOT credible.