jjramsey

I think that you missed my point. You argued earlier that the presence of a large volume of fanciful material in the Gospels implied that they were wholly ahistorical and should be treated like accounts of myths. Yet Apollonius provides a counterexample to show that the presence of even a large amount of such material is a poor gauge of ahistoricity.

Fortuna

We are missing one another.(and initially I was trying to see if this is what a and sparrow were alluding to).

Now, you either didnt read my post, or intentionally excluded the key phrase.
In the absence of anything else (any other writings about the character, archeology ,etc), and if all we have is a fanciful tale, then my statement is that that character's historocity should be considered as questionable, which means possibly (and probably) ahistoric. The same should be true if all other references can be traced to that fanciful story.

In your case , We certainly know more about Appolonius of Tyana than Philostratus's story (written almost 300 years after the fact I believe). if on the other hand, all we had was PS's story, then I would not put much stock in Appolonius being historical (and even if so, what is in that story is in all probability all legendary, there is little actual history left)

Further, I was asking the question, do we consider the entire content of the fanciful story as ahistoric, or do we try to remove all the fanciful and literary stuff and use what is leftover ?

Also, I would need to read PhiloStratus's story of Appolonius, to see just how fanciful it is.

And there is yet another point to this. Mark's gospel also contains quite a number of literary devices, that seem to be designed to show Jesus as cast in the role of a Tanakh prophet. In other words, not only do we have flights of fancy, we have literary references to Tanakh that seem to have specific purpose. (but that , althoug mentioned earlier, is above and beyond the Cupid/Psyche myth content). Do those sorts of litereary devices occur in Philostratus's story ? (never having read it, I dso not know).

I think that the points stands, if ALL we have is a fanciful story, then I think that historocity is questionable at best and I would not grant historicty without further evidence.

jjramsey

The fact that we know a little more about Apollonius of Tyana is irrelevant. Imagine that the Letters of Apollonius, Cassius Dio, and basically every other source besides Philostratus' had been lost. By your criterion, Apollonius would have been judged unhistorical--and that judgment would be wrong. That little thought experiment shows that your criterion is prone to give a false positive, so while it looks good at first blush, it doesn't work very well. You have to have a more nuanced criterion than just "If it contains a lot of legendary material, then it is likely unhistorical."

andrewcriddle

Philostratus wrote c 220 CE. According to Philostratus Apollonius was born c 4 BCE and died (or at least ended his life on earth) c 97 CE. so Philostratus is writing c 125 years after he claims Apollonius died and c 225 years after he claims Apollonius was born.

(Philostratus' chronology is problematic. Apollonius possibly really lived from c 35 to 115 CE.)

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

You have basically expressed my view with your analogy. All of the fundamental acts of Jesus, his birth, miracles, death and ressurection can be found to be mythical. To postulate Jesus was historic would need a vast amount of extra-biblical-evidence, to date no-one has produced one shred of such evidence.

I would also include the letters of Paul.



But then who really is this Saul/Paul? His conversion appears to be a myth, if so, then the people who witnessed his conversion can be considered mythical. Is there any extra-biblical evidence to support an historical Saul/Paul? As far as I know, Saul/Paul is not known outside of biblical text.
This is extremely odd, since Saul/Paul is one of the most important figure, next to Christ, in the biblical texts.

Doug Shaver

Whoever wrote seven (or thereabouts) of the letters with his name on them.

The Damascus Road version does seem to be a fiction. The author of the letters, though, claims to have been converted. And, he must have been, assuming that he was not born believing in the Christ.

Somebody had to write those letters.

The gap between #1 and #2 there is pretty big. In the middle of the first century, Christianity would have been just another religious cult among countless others and Paul would have been just another cult preacher among countless others. There is nothing anomalous about Paul's obscurity during his own lifetime and for a few generations afterward. But if Jesus of Nazareth had been real, his obscurity during roughly the same period would have been practically inexplicable.

aa5874

What is most disturbing about the Saul/Paul conversion, which appears to be fictitious, is that eyewitnesses were present. The disciple, Ananias, also is a key figure of that fictional account. Is it possible that Saul/Paul only lied about his conversion but was truthful about all other details? I am at a loss. How can multitudes of people witness fictional events?

If Jesus, or for that matter Saul/Paul, were historic, then they were notorious liars and frauds. I repeat, there is no medical or scientific finding to support spirits or ghosts as the source of any medical problem. Jesus or Saul/Paul could not have cured any health problems by the removal of ghosts, those are fictional acts, seen by no-one.

I need extra-biblical evidence to support the historicity of Jesus or Saul/Paul. It is extremely odd that no historian was a benefactor of Jesus' personal healing power, although Jesus was claimed to heal thousands.

darstec

Who knows? He well could have been, if indeed Paul/Saul was his name. In doing research for a book, I followed some of the itinerant travelers on their circuits around the United States. The mission circuit was interesting in that while attending the prerequisite chapel devotion, a number of these travelers, were born again at each new mission as though they never heard the sermon before. Their stories were tragic and then uplifting, and got better at each retelling. [HINT: The "born again" former sinners often got a little bit extra portions at the meal, or a bit better bed for the night, and more importantly that precious pack of cigarettes.]

And a TV station did an expose on Benny Hinn showing that he had a small group that traveled with him and were "cured" in every city on the tour. Conversion seems to bestow a greater importance withing the evangelical circuit, and I imagine was the same back then.

darstec

If there is interpolation in one place, there could be interpolation in another. Your argument reminds me of the proverbial drunk's "only a couple of drinks" assertion.

darstec

That is not a quote of Romans it is a paraphrase, and could well be the source of the idea.