Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Rick Sumner · 12-19-2009, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

You have two scholars, but neither of them has written on the question of the historicity of Jesus. Both assume that there was a historical Jesus and try to figure out who he was.

Separate issue. We're not discussing who has written on the subject of Jesus' historicity, we're discussing who is qualified to do so. Whether or not one needs to have formal training specifically in history to have that qualification.

And I could name more. Thompson. Davies. One could go all day. I'm avoiding ones who have written about the historical Jesus because that is the "no true scotsman" you're trying to pull off.

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When people refer to the consensus of scholars on the question of historicity, they have to reach back to people like Shirley Case.

No they don't. One could find a hundred cites acknowledging the existence of that consensus, and throwing their own lot in with it. You're confusing the existence of the consensus with the argumentation behind it.

I have, never once, cited Shirley Case about anything. Nor, for that matter, Michael Grant.

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I'm not going to go over all of this again. It's a side issue to the topic of this thread.

No, it isn't. Because claims about who "real" historians are are part and parcel of the topic of the thread. It's the type of rhetoric that incites, but has no real substance behind it. A contention borne out by the fact that as soon as you're pressed on it, you can provide no specifics. You don't know the difference. You can't justify excluding Beck (I had a ton more lined up too. Kinda disappointing). And you don't know what the differences in training might be.

You just really think there are some because you don't like the term "Religious Studies" or "Biblical Studies" in place of "History," despite the fact that--often--the distinction is arbitrary. An arbitrariness you're oblivious to.

Toto · 12-19-2009, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick Sumner

...

Quote:

I'm not going to go over all of this again. It's a side issue to the topic of this thread.

No, it isn't. Because claims about who "real" historians are are part and parcel of the topic of the thread. It's the type of rhetoric that incites, but has no real substance behind it. A contention borne out by the fact that as soon as you're pressed on it, you can provide no specifics. You don't know the difference. You can't justify excluding Beck (I had a ton more lined up too. Kinda disappointing). And you don't know what the differences in training might be.

You just really think there are some because you don't like the term "Religious Studies" or "Biblical Studies" in place of "History," despite the fact that--often--the distinction is arbitrary. An arbitrariness you're oblivious to.

The rhetoric that incites is coming from Abe, who thinks that there is some consensus that is worth anything and likes to think that anyone who disagrees with him is a deluded ideologues.

There are some modern scholars that I respect, who seem capable of doing history, who actually do historical research (there are many more that do dreck.) But none of them have addressed the issue of historicity of Jesus, other to refer to a consensus that turns out to be based on nothing that would qualify as good historical research.

If you disagree, where is a defense of the historicity of Jesus? Just name the scholar, don't refer to someone who says that the issue is closed, or too boring to even think about.

neilgodfrey · 12-19-2009, 04:31 PM

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Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryhelena

I think that if there was strong evidence for your position - or mine for that matter - that we would all call it a day and move on to something else.... But we are all here - for the illusive evidence has bewitched us all

Yeah, that is sort of an optimistic outlook, that people like us know good evidence when we see it. I don't have the same sort of optimism--I know, or maybe just believe, that intelligent people like me and you can be misled by false theories even when the evidence is strongly against it.

Let me give you an example to illustrate what I am talking about. I am not asking you to accept the New Testament argument; I am only trying to illustrate the psychological principle. It is the evidence from Galatians 1:19, where Paul mentions of meeting James, the Lord's brother, in Jerusalem.

To me, that closes the case that Jesus existed. The Epistle to the Galatians is an authentic letter of Paul, James is listed as one of the four brothers of Jesus in two of the earliest gospels (Mark and Matthew), and James is again mentioned as a brother of Jesus in the writings of Josephus. If Paul thought that James was the brother of Jesus, whom he personally met, then that is conclusive evidence that Jesus existed.

You say you are illustrating a "psychological principle", but your post is really illustrating something else: the pseudo-historical assumptions underlying so much "establishment scholarship" about the historical Jesus. You close the case by appealing to the authority of a face value interpretation of the textual evidence. Real historical studies require that the provenance of texts used as evidence must first be established. To rely solely on the self-witness of texts themselves to establish their provenance and authority is simply naive and inadmissable. Well, that is the case as far as I know in any field of history except, it seems, biblical studies. Without external controls we have no way of establishing what you and so much biblical scholarship presumes about them.

The absence of those external controls should alert us to there being something inadequate about the model through which we interpret them. "MJ" explanations are an attempt to explain the evidence through models that do not rely on unsupported hypotheses about that sources of that evidence.

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But, to MJ advocates, the case remains open. They claim that "the Lord's brother" could be a metaphorical religious brother, like a religious brotherhood. And they have what they take as solid evidence for their claim: in every other time that Paul writes of a "brother" or "brothers," he is clearly using it in exactly that sense.

You fail to understand the "MJ" position. What you claim they say is the "solid evidence" for their claim is a misrepresentation of "their claim". If the matter were simply a series of discrete dot points to prove or disprove then you would have a point. But it is nothing like that.

The question of this verse's interpretation arises because of the anomalous nature of its "obvious face value" meaning within the context of all the other evidence. The question is to understand the passage in the light of the entire corpus of evidence that leaves the literal or face-value interpretation of this one passage standing out like a shag on a rock. To say that there is nothing at all unusual about the literal interpretation of the verse is to presume the premise under question. And you do this by presuming the authenticity of the self-witness of the gospels and other passages and texts without external controls.

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When lay people get involved in these sorts of debates, especially about history or Biblical scholarship, one argument can seem as good as another, or a bad argument can seem better than a good one. That is why I respect the secular experts so much, who make a living studying this stuff day-in-and-day-out. They tend to have the experience to know a good argument from a bad one. To them, the context is the primary indicator of the meaning of a word when two or more definitions can apply, and the usage patterns of the author are merely secondary. The rest of us tend to lack a sufficient ability to make a good judgment, even if we do this sort of thing as a hobby. That is how lay people find or create fringe theories in historical scholarship that seem to make so much sense, even if they really don't.

Fringe theories are not created this way. You have described an exchange here. Fringe theories as far as I am aware do not engage in exchanges with the mainstream position. They simply deny or ignore or dismiss the establishment position and stick to their own mantras. Do moon-landing-hoax or aliens-built-thee-pyramids people, for example, engage in serious debates over the alternative evidence? I don't think so, and it is obvious why.

aa5874 · 12-19-2009, 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick Sumner

....A good example of the question of prejudice, and why we shouldn't dismiss people based on them, appears in our own Vorkosigan, I think. Vork long and loudly proclaimed that Mark was "fiction." Then he began his commentary on Mark--ostensibly beginning with a fresh look--and concluded (drumroll please) Mark was fiction!

I suppose it's possible that, through a thorough and balanced consideration of all evidence Vork coincidentally found an argument that agreed with a previously stated conclusion. It's possible, but to me seems extraordinarily unlikely.

But, it is you who have just inadvertently exposed your own prejudice.

You claim that it seems "extra-ordinarily unlikely" that Vork's argument agreed with his previously stated conclusion WITHOUT doing a "thorough and balanced consideration of all the evidence".

Talk about prejudice and bias!

Now, tell me was Vork wrong when he claimed, as you say, that Mark was fiction? You think Mark is history?

Chaucer · 12-19-2009, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neilgodfrey

Go back and have a look at the posts between Doherty and others when the JM position was first raised on Crosstalk2 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/) -- do a count of the posts "with attitude" and those without, and then compare their positions on the argument. You will see my point demonstrated easily.

Well, I'm frankly non-plussed. I've been a member of Crosstalk2 now for about a year, and even after using their Search engine, I am still totally unable to come up with any direct exchange between "Doherty and others". Please, could you give a more direct link to some exchange directly involving Doherty -- preferably, his very first posts to that board, if you can find them.

Thanks,

Chaucer

neilgodfrey · 12-19-2009, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick Sumner

What, specifically, do you think an historian would do that an historical critic of the NT doesn't? What specific training do you think would be different?

Let's start with the way evaluation of the nature and provenance of the source materials is conducted. Few historical critics of the NT that I have read let the absence of external controls on their evaluation of texts bother them too much. To treat X as a historical source of information without having any external controls for establishing the provenance of X is unheard of, as far as I am aware, in any historical studies other than biblical studies.

As one scholar way back in 1904 attempted to warn, in vain:

Quote:

With regard to the recurrent inclination to pass off Papias’s remarks about the first two Synoptists as “ancient information” and to utilize them in some fashion or other, a somewhat more general observation may not be out of place. The history of classical literature has gradually learned to work with the notions of the literary-historical legend, novella, or fabrication; after untold attempts at establishing the factuality of statements made it has discovered that only in special cases does there exist a tradition about a given literary production independent of the self-witness of the literary production itself; and that the person who utilizes a literary-historical tradition must always first demonstrate its character as a historical document. General grounds of probability cannot take the place of this demonstration. It is no different with Christian authors. In his literary history Eusebius has taken reasonable pains; as he says in the preface he had no other material at his disposal than the self-witness of the books at hand . . . . how much more is this not the situation in the case of the Gospels, whose authors intentionally or unintentionally adhered to the obscurity of the Church, since they neither would nor could be anything other than preachers of the one message, a message that was independent of their humanity? . . . .

This is from an academic paper delivered in 1904 by E. Schwartz: “Uber den Tod der Sohne Zebedaei. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Johannesevangeliums” (= Gesammelte Schriften V, 1963,48-123). It is cited in a 1991 chapter by Luise Abramowski titled “The ‘Memoirs of the Apostles’ in Justin” pp.331-332 published in “The Gospel and the Gospels (or via: amazon.co.uk)” ed. Peter Stuhlmacher.

Neil

ApostateAbe · 12-19-2009, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neilgodfrey

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Yeah, that is sort of an optimistic outlook, that people like us know good evidence when we see it. I don't have the same sort of optimism--I know, or maybe just believe, that intelligent people like me and you can be misled by false theories even when the evidence is strongly against it.

Let me give you an example to illustrate what I am talking about. I am not asking you to accept the New Testament argument; I am only trying to illustrate the psychological principle. It is the evidence from Galatians 1:19, where Paul mentions of meeting James, the Lord's brother, in Jerusalem.

To me, that closes the case that Jesus existed. The Epistle to the Galatians is an authentic letter of Paul, James is listed as one of the four brothers of Jesus in two of the earliest gospels (Mark and Matthew), and James is again mentioned as a brother of Jesus in the writings of Josephus. If Paul thought that James was the brother of Jesus, whom he personally met, then that is conclusive evidence that Jesus existed.

You say you are illustrating a "psychological principle", but your post is really illustrating something else: the pseudo-historical assumptions underlying so much "establishment scholarship" about the historical Jesus. You close the case by appealing to the authority of a face value interpretation of the textual evidence. Real historical studies require that the provenance of texts used as evidence must first be established. To rely solely on the self-witness of texts themselves to establish their provenance and authority is simply naive and inadmissable. Well, that is the case as far as I know in any field of history except, it seems, biblical studies. Without external controls we have no way of establishing what you and so much biblical scholarship presumes about them.

The absence of those external controls should alert us to there being something inadequate about the model through which we interpret them. "MJ" explanations are an attempt to explain the evidence through models that do not rely on unsupported hypotheses about that sources of that evidence.

You fail to understand the "MJ" position. What you claim they say is the "solid evidence" for their claim is a misrepresentation of "their claim". If the matter were simply a series of discrete dot points to prove or disprove then you would have a point. But it is nothing like that.

The question of this verse's interpretation arises because of the anomalous nature of its "obvious face value" meaning within the context of all the other evidence. The question is to understand the passage in the light of the entire corpus of evidence that leaves the literal or face-value interpretation of this one passage standing out like a shag on a rock. To say that there is nothing at all unusual about the literal interpretation of the verse is to presume the premise under question. And you do this by presuming the authenticity of the self-witness of the gospels and other passages and texts without external controls.

Quote:

When lay people get involved in these sorts of debates, especially about history or Biblical scholarship, one argument can seem as good as another, or a bad argument can seem better than a good one. That is why I respect the secular experts so much, who make a living studying this stuff day-in-and-day-out. They tend to have the experience to know a good argument from a bad one. To them, the context is the primary indicator of the meaning of a word when two or more definitions can apply, and the usage patterns of the author are merely secondary. The rest of us tend to lack a sufficient ability to make a good judgment, even if we do this sort of thing as a hobby. That is how lay people find or create fringe theories in historical scholarship that seem to make so much sense, even if they really don't.

Fringe theories are not created this way. You have described an exchange here. Fringe theories as far as I am aware do not engage in exchanges with the mainstream position. They simply deny or ignore or dismiss the establishment position and stick to their own mantras. Do moon-landing-hoax or aliens-built-thee-pyramids people, for example, engage in serious debates over the alternative evidence? I don't think so, and it is obvious why.

EDIT: It occurred to me that you may think that it has not been established that Paul wrote the epistle to the Galatians. Is that your meaning? I may have barked up the wrong tree.

neilgodfrey, thank you for reasonable thoughts on this matter. You seem to be of the opinion that "the Lord's brother" is an interpolation, and I am sorry I neglected it. I went with the argument that "the Lord's brother" is religiously metaphorical, because that is the argument I have seen used mainly in this forum and from Earl Doherty.

You think that:

You close the case by appealing to the authority of a face value interpretation of the textual evidence. Real historical studies require that the provenance of texts used as evidence must first be established. To rely solely on the self-witness of texts themselves to establish their provenance and authority is simply naive and inadmissable. Well, that is the case as far as I know in any field of history except, it seems, biblical studies.

I am going to have to strongly disagree with you there, and it may help you to read Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Bart D. Ehrman. It is all about how the canon was changed by copyists, and it is about the methods used to determine interpolation from the earliest writings of the author. Interpolations are a central theme of mainline Biblical scholarship, not an exception. If you have read the book, or if you are already familiar with the principles, then maybe I misunderstood, and it would help me if you were to explain further what you mean.

The clause, "James, the Lord's brother," is determined to be genuine, probably because it is something that is said in passing (it seems meant only to explain Paul's activities and not to push a point) and it flows easily with the surrounding writing. Interpolations follow the patterns of being discordant with the surrounding text, they don't match the author's point of view, they push a point of view expected of an interpolator, they use words that the original author is not expected to use, or they are not found in the earliest extent manuscripts.

youngalexander · 12-19-2009, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

EDIT: What is DK? Some kind of forum? Too many abbreviations.

Belated clarification: DK = RD
Probably had DawKins running thru my skull.:banghead:

ApostateAbe · 12-19-2009, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by youngalexander

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

EDIT: What is DK? Some kind of forum? Too many abbreviations.

Belated clarification: DK = RD
Probably had DawKins running thru my skull.:banghead:

ok, thanks.

aa5874 · 12-19-2009, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

...Let me give you an example to illustrate what I am talking about. I am not asking you to accept the New Testament argument; I am only trying to illustrate the psychological principle. It is the evidence from Galatians 1:19, where Paul mentions of meeting James, the Lord's brother, in Jerusalem.

To me, that closes the case that Jesus existed. The Epistle to the Galatians is an authentic letter of Paul, James is listed as one of the four brothers of Jesus in two of the earliest gospels (Mark and Matthew), and James is again mentioned as a brother of Jesus in the writings of Josephus. If Paul thought that James was the brother of Jesus, whom he personally met, then that is conclusive evidence that Jesus existed.

But your basis for claiming Jesus did exist is completely flawed.

1. The Pauline writer was NOT claiming he met Jesus so the existence of Jesus of the NT is not at all confirmed.

2. The Pauline writers, supposedly contemporaries of Jesus, did NOT ever claimed they physically saw Jesus alive or talked to him in Jerusalem or anywhere on earth before he was resurrected.

3. The Pauline writers PRESENTED information about Jesus that appears to be fiction.

4. The Pauline writers admitted or implied that Jesus was NOT a man and had the power to forgive sin because he was raised from the dead.

5. Jesus of the Pauline writers is the same Jesus of the Gospels, the offspring of the Holy Ghost of God and it is for that precise reason why the Pauline writings are canonized as SACRED SCRIPTURE to be read in the Churches as from an agent or apostle of Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary and of the Holy Ghost.

6. The same books [Matthew and Mark] that you claimed have information about Jesus and his brothers also claimed Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost, that Mary was still a virgin after his birth, walked on water, transfigured, resurrected and ascended to heaven.

Now, your methodology of looking at a single verse or half a verse to come to a conclusion about the historicity of Jesus is most laughable but perhaps you have nothing else to cling to.

And what is the point in claiming Jesus had a brother when, in the Canonized NT, it is already claimed he had a mother who was a VIRGIN after Jesus was already born?

You simply cannot use the handbook on Jesus, the NT, to prove that Jesus was only human. Your arguments will be destroyed every time. Jesus in the NT WAS a GOD/MAN, the Creator.

Not one single writer in the NT CLAIMED Jesus was just a MAN.

Your conclusion is completely erroneous.

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