Toto

What sources tell you that Jesus existed? Some magical tales that have no indicia of reliability. A few vague references that might very well be forgeries. How is this different from Hercules? Does the fact that the magical tales were set less than a century before the date of their writing matter all that much, when we have no indication that they are based on memory?

The only reason is to understand history. It doesn't help for you to impugn the motives of everyone else. There is no particular reason for anyone to claim that there was no historical Jesus - a merely human Jesus will work as well for the Enemies of Christianity. You will find that mythicists have a variety of philosophical stances, as do historicists.

ETA: Well, a lot of cross posting happened there.

Antipope Innocent II

The gospels do. So does Paul. Sure, they also have him doing miraculous things as well and we'd need some extraordinary evidence for those claims. But for the ordinary claim that the guy had existed, within living memory of the sources in question, I need some solid reason to be sceptical about such an unremarkable thing.

Someone could make a case for Apollonius of Tyana being entirely legendary as well, especially given the nature of the miracle stories told about his career and the late date of our main source (far later than the gospels). But I don't know of any historian who doesn't think it highly likely that he existed. That's because a guy like Apollonius existing (and getting legends told about him later) is a fairly unremarkable thing and we'd therefore need a good reason to think he didn't. Ditto for Yeshua.

Ditto for Apollonius. So, are you a "Mythic Apolloniuser" as well or do you reserve your hyperscepticism for Jesus for some reason?

We have statements from Paul that they are based on memory. And a statement that he met Yeshua's brother. Of course, once you mention that sort of thing and all the Flying Circus stuff about "interpolations" etc gets wheeled out to make them go away. If that doesn't work, Spin shouts at you.

We've been over this before. Denying the very existence of Jesus does a much better job of denying Christianity for people inclined toward that, to my mind, rather adolescent pastime/obsession.

Of course they do. I've also found that many (note - not all) of them have an evangelistic zeal against Christianity in common nonetheless. This is evident in the frothing vehemence of many of their utterances. Bellowing their opinions as though they are facts carved on the foundations of the universe for example.

Toto

Historicists try to claim that Jesus must have spoken Aramaic, although we have no evidence of that and the earliest gospels are written in Greek.

The only people I have seen make a point of Yeshua are the Jews for Jesus as part of their missionary effort to convince modern Jews that Jesus was really a Jew.

When I first started posting here in 2000, I knew little or nothing about the mythicist arguments. But there were a group of aggressive Chrsitian apologists (Layman, Nomad, Metacrock, and a few others) who spent some time ridiculing the idea of mythicism. This piqued my curiosity, and I started reading up on the question.

At that point I figured out that the official position of American Atheists was Frank Zindler's, that Jesus was a myth. More mellow atheists advised against this, since it was not necessary for atheism to show that Jesus did not exist, and several prominent members of this site had argued that the claim that Jesus existed was a very ordinary claim and that extraordinary evidence was not needed to decide that Jesus probably existed as a human in the first century. But I read Doherty's book and it seemed to make a lot of sense. I also read more on the sociology of religion and the formation of new religious movements (the polite term for cults), and it made more sense.

I also got on the Jesus Mysteries list, where a number of posters went beyond Doherty, in challenging the historicity of Paul and other figures of early Christian myth.

Then Richard Carrier announced that he would evaluate Doherty's thesis from a professional historian's point of view, and asked for questions. The entire board was in suspence for quite some time, waiting for his verdict, which finally came down as Doherty had carried a burden of proof, and at least shifted the burden to the historicist camp to go forward with the evidence.

We all let out our breath. The Christian apologists drifted away. People took up other projects. But it was after all this that a few atheists started reviling mythicists in the same terms that the Christian apologists used - - and I have no idea why they have such passion. The only really defensible position for most of us is to be agnostic on the issue, because the reliable evidence is so equivocal.

Now we have the Antipope dropping in on us, who missed out on all this history. He claims that it is the mythicists who are vehement and zealous, but my experience has been the opposite on this board. But I think he mistakes spin for an atheist and a mythicist, when spin is a thorough agnostic and only cares about standards of evidence.

spin

Is John the same name as Sean or Ewen or Ian? They are all derived from the same Hebrew name, Yehohanan, but they are not the same, are they? It is not useful to mix where something comes from with the usage. John Smith is not the same as Ian Smith.

Someone called Theodotus in the ancient world was often Jewish. The Hebrew name would be Jonathan, but very many grave markers had Theodotus, indicating that the person was actually called Theodotus.

Simon and Shimeon are not the same name, but the former, originally a Greek name, was often used in translations for the latter. In fact Simon was used by Jews in the diaspora. Was Simon Magus originally a Simon or a Shimeon?

We only have literary texts mainly from well after the purported facts of the life of Jesus. The earliest gospel, Mark, shows signs of having been written in a Latin context, which strongly suggests Rome. The literature has the name we render as Jesus (Ihsous). If there was a Jesus (and I don't know) he may have been called Ihsous or Yeshu (for about a third of the Palestinian population used Greek as their first language, the other languages used being Aramaic and Hebrew). If there was no real Jesus, then the name issue is simply superfluous.

Yeshua is a contracted form of Yehoshua, which is usually rendered Joshua through convention in English. The LXX makes no difference between Yehoshua and Yeshua. They both end up Ihsous. A Greek speaking Jew, who knew his LXX would name his child Ihsous, rather than the Hebrew form, wouldn't he? A writer who knew the LXX but not the Hebrew bible would use Ihsous rather than the Hebrew, wouldn't he? A Hebrew speaker wouldn't use Ihsous or Yeshu, but Yeshua or Yehoshua, wouldn't he?

We don't know the exact cultural context of the writers of the gospel, so we cannot know what form was original to the name of the figure we call Jesus.


spin

Toto

Every single part of the gospels can be constructed from a creative reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. Every part. If you peel away all of the magical parts, and then remove all of the references to the Hebrew Scripture, you are left with nothing.

Besides, there is nothing that says that if you take a tale that is full of supernatural events, that you can remove those supernatural events and have real history left over. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. You would like this to be like a lot of contemporary history, where there are identifiable events, and then a few gods are called on to explain things, or the Emperor Vespasian does a miraculous cure. But we have other evidence of the events here.

I am agnostic as to the existence of Apollonius.

Interpolations are well documented in the literature of this period. You are being unreasonable if you deny that interpolations are at least a possibility, if not a probability. Have you read Ehrman? Walker? I am getting tired of supplying the references. Search the archives for thread with interpolations in the title.

It apparently doesn't do a much better job. It sets up resistance. People are much more able to give up fundamentalists beliefs for a more liberal religious stance before they let go of a major cultural icon like Jesus, who can be manipulated to do whatever you need - love you unconditionally, threaten your enemies with damnation, etc.

As why is denying Christianity an adolescent pastime? Here in America, the religious right is a serious threat to modern life and world peace.

Antipope Innocent II

I didn't realise Carrier was a professional historian. The information I can find on him on the net doesn't indicate that he has a research or teaching position at any institution and only a couple of peer reviewed papers in the Journal of Higher Criticism. In fact, I was under the impression he was still working towards his PhD. Has he completed his doctorate? When did he take up a position at a university?

That isn't the "only" defensible position to take at all. You can choose to be an agnostic on the topic if you like, but the nature of ancient and medieval sources mean that if we were agnostic on every question on which there isn't clear and definitive evidence we'd end up being agnostic on virtually everything. It's perfectly defensible to decide that, on the whole, the idea that an historical Jesus/Yeshua existed is the most reasonable interpretation of the evidence.

You may not agree with my position, but to declare it "indefensible" is silly. And rather arrogant. I disagree with Christian apologists, but I don't declare even their positions "indefensible". I can see how they can be defended, I just find their defences ultimately unconvincing.

Not all of it, actually. I've been browsing this forum for years.

Experience tends to be a highly individual thing. Read over Spin's posts in this thread and tell me if they don't sound just a teensy bit vehement and zealous. Several obsevers on this thread seem to think so.

Since my powers of long distance mind reading via broadband are weak to non-existent it seems I have mistaken Spin's position. That's understandable - I often get mistaken for a Christian apologist simply because sometimes my arguments overlap with theirs. I don't get into righteous wrath about it, just politely point out the other's mistake.

aa5874

I think you have highlighted the problem. The Christians, as you say, are in favour of a real miracle working god-man.
The authors of the NT and the Church Fathers presented and tried to establish a real miracle working god-man. The authors and fathers claimed that there were witnesses to the conception through the Holy Ghost, witnesses to the transfiguration, the resurrection, the ascension and that Jesus was seen using a mixture of spit and dirt to make the blind see and that Jesus brought back to life a man four days dead.

The authors of the NT produce dialogue of Jesus and the witnesses, they name, at times, the geographical location where these highly improbable events were witnessed and carried out.

Now this description is legendary, anecdotal and clearly mythical, and to augment the myth, there are no extant historical eyewitness accounts of this specific Jesus, son of Mary, by any extra-biblical non-apologetic writer.

I think HJers confuse historicity and plausibilty. A fiction novel may be completely plausible but of no historical value. I find the Jesus of the NT to be implausible, fictional, legendary and not supported by history.

Antipope Innocent II

Which would be a much more powerful argument for wholesale scepticism about those accounts - both the extraordinary and the ordinary - if it wasn't in the nature of Judaism for newer writings to echo and obliquely refer to earlier scriptures. So these may be wholesale constructs or they may be echoes and references. Or, as I'd argue, a combination of both. To simply declare that they definitely are wholesale constructs and nothing else is to overstate your case quite considerably.

It's a good thing I'm not saying anything so simplistic. Can you think of any scholar of the HJ who adopts such a facile methodology? I certainly can't.

See above. That's not even remotely close to what I'm saying or how I regard the evidence.

Full points for consistency then. But as I said in my post above, if we adopted a position of agnosticism on every point in ancient history where we don't have definite evidence we'd sit on the fence about almost everything. That's why historians of this period, and others where our evidence is scanty, take considered, provisional stances on what they regard to be most probable, likely or reasonable and then make their case for why they feel that way. On Apollonius my stance is that he existed, but that he didn't raise anyone from the dead or see a long-distance vision of the assassination of Domitian. They were stories that arose about him later. Much like Yeshua.

Where did I do that? Of course they are well documented; do you think I swallow Antiquities 18.63-64 whole? And of course they are a possibility. My objection was to the way, whenever a passage can't be waved away in any other way, MJers seem to always reach for the magic wand of interpolation. This tendency is one of the reasons I find the MJer arguments so contrived.

Toto, I've been studying this stuff for 20 years. You hardly have to refer me to basic works like those of Ehrman. Thanks all the same.

And telling them that Jesus was a Jewish apocalypsist ranting about the end of the world doesn't? Resistence is only a problem if you want to go beyond "denying" Christianity to actually convincing people to change their beliefs. Those are two different objectives.

See above.

Because denying Christianity rarely does anything other than give the denier a feeling of smug satisfaction. That's why it's a favourite past-time of recovering fundies and adolescents who like annoying easy targets. I can think of plenty of far more effective of countering the genuine threats that Christianity poses than trying, quixotically, to convince them that their faith is a sham.

Toto

Carrier is working on his dissertation, but he is trained as a professional historian.

Why is that a problem?

That case has not been made. Find me a peer reviewed study on the historicity of Jesus. There are none. It's just the easiest position to take.

Perhaps we are using a different definition of indefensible.

spin is not a mythicist. Find another example.

Toto

OK - tell me what part of the gospels are historical, and what methodology you use to separate out the historical bits from the legends. Please avoid the thoroughly discredited "criteria of embarrassment" unless you want to go throught the archives and answer all of the criticisms of that criterion.

Robin Lane Fox seems to take that approach.

I don't know which MJ'ers you are reading, but Doherty has been very reluctant to label things interpolations. He has followed mainstream scholarship on this fairly closely. And most of the work on interpolations has been done by historicists. I find this charge totally lacking in supporting evidence.

So what about Walker?

That has to be the objective of everyone who cares about their friends and family being caught up in a cult.

Such as?