Stevewe

According to Christian tradition, all the apostles were martyred. As for how trustworthy it is or other comments in this thread about the whole stroy being made up, the Christian tradition has rather more historical validity than the accounts of Julius Caesar. That is, in terms of independent, corroborative accounts close to the actual actual events described in time. Which is why historians don't question the existence of J.C. or his apostles.

Vorkosigan

Actually, the traditions are pretty confused. For example, how did Matthew die? Was it of martydom in Mysore (The Martyrium) or a natural death in Heiropolis (Syriac Church, Ambrose, Paulina of Nola)? Clement of Alexandria quotes Heracleon to say Matthew died a natural death, while Sanhedrin 43a says he was condemned to death by a Jewish court. The Roman Church places his martydom in Ethiopia. So many choices, so many possibilities....

Really? How do we know when an account is historically valid?

What historians -- not NT scholars -- have examined the question, using what methodologies? And what were their conclusions?

justsumner

Before I had gone to the "Evil Side" I too always accepted the stories as more or less historical. Then my Paulean Professor explained that it was more than likely Paul died of old age in Spain awaiting Jesus' return. Realize that Dr. Trobisch is perhaps the number 2 or 3 Paul scholar alive today I have to take his statement as reasonable.

I doubt very very much that these diciples existed (As these 12, for reasons of language and) and that if a group had followed this guy Yeshua "Jospeh" than there is little chance to know how and when the died. Because we have 5th and 6th hand stories to go from...well, figure it out. Unless of course you are a Fundy nut, in which case you can point to the fact that if the KJV was good enough for Paul, it must be FACTS!!!!


:huh:

Epictetus

This is unabashed nonsense. This habit of making grandiose, unfounded, hyperbolic statements in support of the historicity of the NT, Jesus, the apostles, etc. seems to be one of the favorite tactics of certain brands of Christians. And to compare the historical validity of Jesus to that of Julius Caesar is just plain funny! Caesar wrote his own books, he was noted in multiple external sources, there are coins with his picture and name on them. This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding Caesar's historicity.

What is there of Jesus and the apostles? Virtually nothing except the scattered writings in the NT which are dated from the mid second century at the earliest. Jesus wrote nothing himself, has no archeological evidence in support of him from the first century, and is essentially an unknown. He is not mentioned by any secular historians or writers from his time period, including Josephus, and all the rest, other than interpolations added in later centuries.

How can anyone take seriously the Christian faith when its adherents resort to "spinning" the stories about Jesus? They say whatever they have heard without regard for researching the information themselves. This is a tactic of the desperate - screech as loudly and as authoritatively as possible and somebody is sure to believe you, regardless of whether your facts are straight. :down:

spin

Having responded to this sort of logic before, I'm glad Epictetus has already had his shot. I can then say to the writer of the above opinions:

I appreciate your loyalty to your tradition. However, tradition is not history, never has been and never will be. History is what happened in the past. That is nice and definite and hopefully simple, just as the historian's job is to attempt to uncover what happened in the past. The relationship between tradition and history is quite problematical, for there is no necessity that tradition has much of a relationship with history at all. What this means is that, if you are interested in history, you have to follow the rules of evidence, which is what the historian uses in his/her attempt to uncover what happened in the past. If you have no evidence then you can't talk about the past.

On what is the xian tradition based? It is the experience and imagination of those who came before incorporated in the body of knowledge held as useful within a community. How do you convert that experience and imagination into evidence? Usually you can't. You have to take them on trust. What then is the evidence for the information found in the xian tradition? We have no artefacts from the period referred to, no statues, like we have of Caesar, no coins to help, as we have for Caesar, no building inscriptions, no monuments, no nothing. We have undatable texts, some of which are based on others, reducing the witness value of these texts because no-one can claim they are independent voices. If we don't know when the texts were written, then who wrote them? But here again we only have tradition to help us, for there is nothing in the gospel texts to suggest who wrote them. There are merely traditional names applied to them, yet if we listen to Eusebius's Papias, the text that Papias knows as Matthew doesn't reflect our text, nor does his Mark, for the present gospel is not written from the point of view of Peter, who is portrayed as a mild dunderhead. Yet, time and again, the material from Papias is used over and over and considered by many as independent sources. Great logic.

Tradition is a funny thing. Imagine a xian sectarian group called the Ebionites. The church father father, Tertullian, tells us about the group's founder, Ebion, and provides a little background information. A century later more information has been discovered about this person, Ebion. A century later, even more. The most interesting thing is that the Ebionites take there name from a Hebrew word ebion, meaning poor. There was no person, Ebion, at all. But that did not stop xian tradition from giving him existence of sorts.

The relationship between history and tradition is not a very strong one, and what may be historical about tradition is not easy to extract, for you need external keys to get at it. This doesn't mean that tradition doesn't contain history, but if it does, you can't see where it is. It is virtually as though there were no history in tradition, except for those bits that can be shown to have historical support from external sources.

But wait, even that can be problematical when you realise that the maintenance of literary records was in the hands of xians for many hundreds of years. This is where tangible evidence from the period comes to the fore. It at least guarantees that the information comes from the era. Oh hell, but then there are the fake artefacts which come out of Israel for the unsuspecting religious buyer. Hopefully, one can see the enormous problems in trying to turn tradition into history.


spin

Vorkosigan

<sigh> Another drive-by

Chuck Rightmire

Yes, somebody obeying the drive thru window sign. But it did bring several very interesting posts in its wake, I must say. I learned something.

Stevewe

Stevewe

Ouch, "grandiose," ouch ouch," spurious," ouch ouch ouch, "drive by."
I wasn't just driving thru. I admit my reference to Julius Caesar and Jesus was a bit glib, though.

But to my point: documentary evidence of Julius Caesar's accomplishments dates no earlier than AD 900, about 1000 years after. (And that's what historians rely on. Not statues so much. ) That's his own autobiographical account, copied industriously by Christian monks over the centuries. 1000 years leaves a lot of time for invention and mistakes.

As for Christ, we have fragments of the Gospels among the Dead Sea Scrolls, putting them no later than AD 68, while paleographic analysis puts them at AD 50. Another find, the Magdalen Fragment, contains parts of Matthew, dated by paleography to AD 65 plus or minus 15.

There are about 80 manuscripts of the New Testament on papyrus, which went out of use by 400, and 4,000 in parchment, which replaced it.

The same historians we rely for independent corroboration on Julius Caesar, Suetonius and Tactitus, both refer to Christ. Suetonius, in passing, mentions Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome in AD 49 when Christian and non Christian Jews fought each other in the streets.

Non-Christian Tactitus , writing about AD 115, describes how Nero falsely blamed the burning of Rome on the Christians, and refers to how "Christus, from whom the name had its origins, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus."

The Romano-Jewish historian Josephus makes two references to Jesus. The longer one has long been questioned–by Christians, because it makes Josephus sound like a Christian when he was known not have been one. The general assumption is than a Christian copyist inserted credulous references to Jesus' miracles, messiahship and diety. Fortunately, an Arab copy of Josephus has been uncovered with the questionable passages missing. It reports Jesus' crucifixion by Pontius Pilate and the disciples' claims to his being alive afterwards.

Pliny, a Roman official in Asia Minor, writing around 112, reported on his persecutions of Christians, and describes their worship, implying some form of Communion service, and that hymns were being sung to Christ "as to a god."

Writing in AD 221, Julius Africanus refers to the historian Thallus, who wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean about AD 52, and who explained the dark sky reported in the gospels at the time of the crucifxion to have been caused by an eclipse. A early skeptic.

And so on.
The point being, simply, that there is plenty of historical evidence for the existence of Jesus. At least as much as for any other minor prophet executed during this period.

As for how the disciples died, it's true, there is no documentary evidence for most of them, and even the Christian tradition disagrees as to where and how–and even if, since one version has St. John never dying. It's tradition, not history, as distinct from the life and death of Christ, which is history. As for the Resurrection–all history can report is that he was believed to have risen.

As to skepticism that the disciples even existed, well, how do you get from Jesus to a religion being blamed for burning Rome down without there being disciples? There being no internet news groups to spread the stories.

To answer part of the question that started this thread: James was, according to Luke, executed by King Agrippa, Peter is generally accepted as being executed in Rome, and John Zebedee, in Ephesus.
John was tortured but survived, maybe to die of old age. As for the others, there are varying degrees of legend: Andrew on x shaped cross in southern Greece; conflicting traditions have Matthew dying a martyrs death and not.

Here's an example of skepticism out of control. Since 12 was a special number, reasons one of the writers in this thread, there probably were not 12 apostles, but some othe r number. The 12-part was just made up because it was special.
But if 12 were special, why couldn't Jesus have picked 12 apostles for that reason?

This reminds me of the argument in the Passover Plot– that Christ couldnt have believed himself to be God because that was not the Jewish belief at the time about the Messiah. But if Jesus were God, as the Gospels claimed he believed he was, then he wasn't reliant solely on Jewish teaching of the time for self-understanding.

It doesn't prove anything, it just points out the inadequacy of some attempts at disproof.

Stevewe

I realize I jumped from tradition to history in the above.sort of jumped rails--in good faith. Im having trouble working within this environment--keeping hold of the thread while commenting on it. I'll try to do better.