aa5874

But the writer called Paul is part of the reason, too.

1. There is no historical sighting of the writer called Paul, that is, no church writer wrote that they were in the presence of the writer called Paul.
2. The writer Paul claimed to have seen Jesus after he was in a resurrected state.
3. "Paul" claimed his gospel is based on the resurrection.
4. Nothing in the writings of Paul with respect to Jesus can be confirmed to be true or can be corroborated.
5. It is really not known when or who wrote all the letters with the name Paul.
6. The writer Paul wrote fiction about Jesus.

The writer Paul is another elephant for the HJers but they will just deny that it isn't. "Paul" will be assumed into existence on speculation.

GakuseiDon

Doherty's position on Ignatius is very interesting, and in fact I had that partially in mind when I wrote about the problem with time-lines in my OP.

In his book, Doherty writes (p. 260 paperback edition):

As noted in chapter 6, Ignatius is unlikely to be familiar with a written Gospel, for he would surely have pointed to one in support of his declaration that Jesus had been born of Mary and crucified by Pilate... Nowhere in all of his seven letters, written around the year 107 while he was being brought to Rome for execution, does Ignatius quote a single teaching of Jesus, nor a miracle, nor any detail of the passion under Pilate which he so ardently defends.

All this would suggest that the biography he put forward is of recent vintage, and that few if any other details of Jesus' human life are known to him.

So, these ideas about a historical Jesus are new, and thus we wouldn't expect many details by Ignatius, simply because few existed.

Now, on his website here, Earl writes (my bolding):

Whether all the circumstances of Ignatius’ condemnation and martyrdom are historical or not, the question of the authenticity of the letters themselves is a separate issue. Traditional scholarship by and large accepts them; radical scholarship since the late 19th century has tended to date them later, perhaps as late as 160. Again, it is not crucial for the purposes of this article to arrive at a firm decision as to authenticity. My own inclination would be to lean away from authenticity but to date them no more than a decade or two after Ignatius’ passing. The main reason for finding a date after the middle of the century unconvincing is the absence in the shorter recension of all but the most basic Gospel data along with elements like apostolic tradition and succession, and the conclusion that the writer was familiar with no written Gospels.

So, Earl pushes the date back by a decade or two (meaning roughly between 117 and 136 CE). He won't date them later than 150 CE because only the most basic details are known. And yet, Earl writes the following about Athenogoras, who wrote around 180 CE, and Tatian, who wrote around 160 CE:

Athenagoras never uses the term "gospel"; he speaks of "the witness to God and the things of God" and enumerates the prophets and other men, yet he ignores what should have been the greatest witness of them all, Jesus of Nazareth...

In Tatian's Apology we find a few allusions to Gospel sayings, but no specific reference to written Gospels and no attribution of such things to Jesus.

Earl finds the lack of historical details in Ignatius noteworthy. But then he believes that someone else wrote those letters, someone who lived 10 to 20 years later... and someone who also apparently didn't feel the need to include details. Earl doesn't say who he thinks that was, but obviously if he believes it was a historicist then his position is even worse. Why would a historicist, writing even later than Ignatius, NOT include such details if they were expected of Ignatius? And if they weren't expected of a later interpolator, why expect them of Ignatius?

And, to top this off, Earl won't date Ignatius beyond 150 CE because of the lack of gospel details, but he has ALREADY dated two other authors who lack similar references past 150 CE.

I'm not saying these inconsistencies are insurmountable, but they exist and Earl needs to address them.

fatpie42

I think it should be blatantly obvious that the best argument for mythicism is the complete lack of any decent historical evidence (the most glaring example of which would be the lack of historical detail in the earliest accounts). And, of course, there is nothing wrong with this.

What is the best evidence that dragons in folklore were not historical? No amount of searching through old folklore will provide such good evidence as is provided by the complete lack of any evidence of dragons outside of folk tales. The same goes for pixies (which some people actually believe in to this day).

Of course, another major reason for viewing Jesus as mythical is because the general trend in the quest for the historical Jesus is: "the more you look, the less you know." The biggest progress seems to be in terms of what cannot have been true of a historical Jesus and not at all what is likely to be true of any possible historical Jesus.

Steven Carr

That's an interesting line of argument.

Paul fails to mention Joseph, Bethlehem, Mary, Nazareth, Galilee.

He fails to mention Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, Lazarus, Judas, most of the disciples, even the word disciples, Joanna, Salome, Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, Bartimaeus, Simon of Cyrene, that he had sons Rufus and Alexander.

So because this vast cast of Gospel characters is not mentioned by Paul, or James, or Jude, or Hebrews, we somehow conclude that this is not a strike against historicity?

Could you run this logic past me again please?

Meanwhile, Paul lets slip all sorts of historical details, such as that some Christians were baptising for the dead, that there were disputes about table-fellowship, that there were people called Abraham and Adam, that there were evangelists like Andronicus, or people like Priscilla and Aquila who had risked their lives.

But he does not ever mention any Gospel character, in connection with any Gospel story.

GakuseiDon

That's right, and I'm certainly not denying this. The lack of historical detail helps the case for an ahistorical Jesus.

But: What if we found quite a few examples of early writers who simply didn't include a lot of historical details? How would that affect our reading of Paul and what he didn't say?

Apostate1970

And that's exactly what they did. In lieu of acquaintance with the historical details they began proliferating Christologies and cosmologies.

Not at all. Why would they? If you wanted to tell a story of religious signifigance would you invent purportedly historical details about someone you'd never met and didn't know but did believe that there were historical details regarding? No, of course not. Instead you'd invent purely mythical elements based on similar stories you'd heard elsewhere and your own preconceived notions.

No, not at all. That's not at all justified by a relative lack of historical data in the letters of Paul, a man who had never met Jesus and who had strong ideological and social differences with those who had met him but had not yet produced a written history. An early written history is not something that we should expect from Jewish fishermen and to think so is ridiculous. And to think that the sort of man who Paul was would wait upon the fishermen to get their act together before he started mythologizing (read "taking advantage of") this upstart faith is equally ridiculous.

This part you have correct.

No, those were the second wave of Christians, not the first.

Whether contemporary or not, he should not treat him differently if he never met him. He never did and never pretended to.

Toto

It is considered bad form to mock your opponents by mischaracterizing their arguments.

Actually, it is about weird excuses for why Paul didn't say much about a historical Jesus.

Mythicism is a conclusion that is reached after viewing all the evidence and developng a theory of the origins of Christianity. The lack of historical detail in Paul is a very minor factor.

figuer

Why do you assume Jesus of the NT had NO followers? Why do you think you know what is false in the NT about the supposed Jesus and his so called-followers?
So are you.

Please, provide some historical evidence for your assumptions.

I don't see Christ Mythicists being anymore logical in their assumptions than Christ Historicists.

The Iliad is more fantastic than the Gospels, and yet it has been shown to reflect aspects of a historical occurrence. I don't see any problem with the conception that there was a teacher/charlatan named Jesus in ancient Palestine who had followers and was crucified and about whom a cult was developed.

avi

I agree. Problem is not whether one agrees or not, the problem is: WHERE'S the evidence to support or repudiate any position on Jesus of Nazareth? The elephant in the room, as far as I am concerned, is not simply Paul's lack of detail regarding the life of Jesus, but the overwhelming absence of authenticity regarding any aspect of the new testament.
I agree with aa5874, and believe, without evidence, that it is logically simpler, to ask those who support a mythical structure, (in this case a human who is supposed to have also been a god, but who nevertheless, despite being ostensibly omnipotent, managed to find a way to die, supposedly, at the hands of mere mortals,) to produce evidence of the existence of followers of this mythical person, rather than to ask me, or anyone else, for evidence that he did not exist, or did not have followers. I ask again, where's the evidence that there were 1000 followers of Jesus in the year 40CE, as was cited a couple of days ago, in an earlier post, on anther thread in the forum??? I do not agree that it is my duty to prove the contrary, i.e. that there were not 1000 followers of Jesus in the year 40CE. The very large elephant in the room, is the absence of any credible data governing any aspect of the life of someone called Jesus of Nazareth.

figuer

The Gospel is evidence. That the Gospel is an unreliable source only establishes basis for doubt regarding the claim, but it does not invalidate as such the claim.

It is your duty if you make the claim that there were not 1000 followers of Jesus in 40AD. The only ones having no duty to prove are those making no claim, pro or contra (like myself).

Some of the data in the Gospels is not incredible as such.

I don't really see the necessity to decide upon a historical or a mythical Jesus. Some aspects of Jesus are obviously myth, some might be historical. My rejection of Christianity is based on scientific/theological reasons, not on wether there was a man named Jesus or not.