ApostateAbe

This is about Earl Doherty’s rebuttal to Shirley Jackson Case: The Historicity of Jesus (Chapter VII: The Gospel Evidence for Jesus' Existence)

Earl Doherty, on his page Responses to Critiques of the Mythicist Case (Part 1), quotes Shirley Jackson Case as follows:

“But we are not to imagine that the above data convey any adequate idea of the actual extent to which tradition about Jesus was known and used in the first half of the second century. The external evidence now known to us pertains more particularly to the history of the gospels’ rise to prominence than to the fact of their existence. Since they had not been issued under the aegis of any special authority, it was only gradually that they won their way to general recognition. We remember that Ignatius encountered Christians who were unwilling to accept any written authorities except the ‘charters,’ seemingly meaning the Old Testament, yet these individuals were doubtless acquainted with all the essentials of gospel tradition as commonly repeated and interpreted in public preaching and teaching. Their demurrer is not a rejection of gospel tradition but a hesitation about placing any writing on a plane with the Old Testament as ‘Scripture.’ Thus it appears that the scantiness of reference to the gospels in the early second century is no fair measure of the probability or improbability of their existence at that time.” [p.207-208]

Case is countering the “hyper-skepticism” argument that the absence of explicit citations to the written gospels in early Christian writings suggests that the gospels were written late in the 2nd century. To rephrase Case's counterpoint, this absence can be easily explained as the written gospels not achieving authoritative status in the time shortly after they were written, and for ancient authors to use them as though they were authorities would make for a weak theological argument.

This claim from Case, though written in 1912, has direct relevance for Earl Doherty, because Doherty repeats the old hyper-skeptical argument. Doherty wrote on his website:

In defense of his claims for the veracity of such historical details as Jesus’ birth from Mary, his baptism by John, his crucifixion by Pilate, it is difficult to believe that Ignatius would not have pointed directly to a written document that contained an account of such things. Many episodes in the Gospel story could have demonstrated the ‘humanity’ of Jesus. If Ignatius wants his readers “to be convinced” of this or that aspect of his human Christ, he should have been quoting Matthew on these occasions, and clearly identifying his source at least some of the time.

This is Earl Doherty’s rebuttal to Case:

If there was ever a classic case of someone in denial, this is it. After enumerating all “the above data,” Case simply dismisses it as indicating anything that would be detrimental to his preferred picture. He asks us to believe that Gospels in existence since the latter half of the first century would somehow be kept at arm’s length by Christian commentators for many decades, unaccepted and unused, unappealed to because “they had not been issued under the aegis of any special authority,” a meaningless idea for that period since no “special authority” existed.

There is an obvious problem with Doherty’s line of defense--“special authorities” DID exist in relation to the claims about Jesus in the time of Ignatius--the Old Testament scriptures--as Doherty should have known, since it is contained in the same quote of Ignatius by Doherty, and the Septuagint being 2nd-century Christian authority is central to Doherty's model--we know that Clement quoted at length from the Septuagint to support his theology.

Therefore, Case’s claim, that “they [the written gospels] had not been issued under the aegis of any special authority,” is most certainly not meaningless, and it powerfully explains why the gospels were not explicitly cited in the writings of Ignatius, though the basic ideas of the gospel were mentioned by Ignatius--“the birth and the passion and the resurrection, which took place in the time of the governorship of Pontius Pilate.”

This explanation may be little more than speculation on the part of Case, but it is not especially unlikely--we very much expect that any writing by an anonymous author that claims only to have received its knowledge from previous sources at most (Luke 1:1-4) would require the legitimizing effect of time and tradition before becoming scriptural authority effectively used in an ancient theological debate. The hyper-skeptical promoters of the argument from silence need to make a case for why the silence is best explained with the written gospels simply not existing.

Unfortunately, Doherty ignores Case’s most relevant argument for the strength of the gospel evidence--the dating of the gospel of Mark and its proximity to the alleged time of Jesus and his disciples. Case argues on pages 216-218:

While there are still differences of opinion about the exact dates of the several gospels, critical scholarship of today agrees on placing them within fairly well-defined limits. The last thirty-five years of the first century is the general period in which the composition of the Synoptic Gospels and Acts is commonly placed. Our immediate concern is with Mark. Irenaeus says this gospel was written in Rome after the death of Peter and Paul, but whether this statement rests upon a reliable tradition, or is merely Irenaeus' interpretation of the vaguer testimony of Papias, is uncertain. Similar uncertainty attaches to the tradition that Rome was the place of composition. More specific evidence for the dating must be sought in the gospel itself, and this is found in chap. 13. Here Jesus is credited by the author (or by his source) with predicting in emphatic terms the end of the world in Jesus' own generation (13:30 f.; cf. 9:1). Would a tradition of this sort be put into circulation for the first time after everybody who had been of Jesus' own generation was dead? A writer would not be likely to invent for Jesus a saying which history in the writer's own day had shown to be false. A later editor or transcriber might preserve such a tradition, either unconscious of its incongruity, or because he felt it could be explained by some device of interpretation, but he would not create it de novo unless he wished to disparage the individual of whom he was writing—an inconceivable thing for a Christian biographer of Jesus to do. This prophecy about the end must, therefore, represent either an original saying of Jesus, or a saying first ascribed to him while certain of his own associates were still alive. In either case it presupposes a close connection chronologically between Jesus and the framers of the tradition. Another noticeable feature of this thirteenth chapter of Mark is a cautioning against mistaking certain tragic happenings for the actual approach of the ultimate catastrophe, which would bring the present world-order to a close. Preliminary to the final disaster there was to be a season of great tribulation, the like of which the world had never seen before. What historic occasion corresponds to these dire events, when the people of Judea will need to flee to the mountains and when messianic pretenders will endeavor to obtain a following among Christians? Evidently the siege and fall of Jerusalem (66-70 A.D.), described while the fall is yet imminent, or soon after the event. And how closely does the end of all things follow upon these preliminary happenings? The end seemingly is not far off. The gospel is first to be preached to all the nations, yet the end is coming "in those days, after that tribulation," and "this generation shall not pass away until all these things be accomplished." Thus the composition of Mark must fall near the year 70 A.D. Whether the destruction of Jerusalem is a matter of the near future or of the immediate past may be thought questionable, but in either case the Markan tradition comes from an age when some personal followers of Jesus were still alive. And if this is true for Mark, it will be granted without question for the primitive non-Markan source-material incorporated in Matthew and Luke.

This argument is the same argument used by historians today, and the strength of it has not changed. The obvious upper limit of the time of the composition of the synoptic gospels is the earliest time of the certain deaths of all of the disciples of Jesus. If Doherty or anyone else wants to push the compositions into the second century (or well after the time of the earliest certain deaths of the disciples), then a comparably good argument must be provided, not mere ad hoc speculations and not wishful thinking.

Toto

Doherty dates Mark to only about 80 CE, not to the second century.

Case's argument is still quite weak on the question of why a story written about 70 CE should be treated as unauthoritative until a generation or so later, at which point it becomes "gospel truth."

And this argument that the Septuagint was the real authority - please explain how this supports the idea of a historical Jesus? This is, after all, the basis of the mythicist's argument that Jesus was constructed out of the Septuagint, not based on a historical founding figure.

ApostateAbe

OK, looks like I got the wrong idea about Doherty's position. He believes that Mark was composed in 85-90 CE, Matthew and Luke were composed in 100-120 CE, and they didn't come into general consciousness until the middle of the 2nd century. Same essential counter-arguments apply, I figure. The apocalyptic deadlines are contained in Matthew and Luke, too.

Toto

Dating the gospels to 70 CE does not provide any sort of positive support for historicism. One can accept the standard dating for the gospels and still see them as theological fiction, interpreting the LXX in an allegorical fashion with no historical personage at their core.

ApostateAbe

It provides support for historicism the same as any other sort of proximate attestation, but, yeah, I suppose Earl Doherty can defend himself from this argument by claiming that the gospel of Mark is allegorical midrash, and the gospel of Luke is some other genre entirely. It would be digging himself into a hole of improbabilities, sure, but Case's arguments wouldn't completely destroy Doherty's model. Case addressed many of the hyper-skeptical hypotheses that the gospels, especially Mark, were allegorical fiction, in Chapter II, but Case apparently wasn't bothered to rebut them. Doherty wins, or at least he remains standing.

Steven Carr

'To rephrase Case's counterpoint, this absence can be easily explained as the written gospels not achieving authoritative status in the time shortly after they were written, and for ancient authors to use them as though they were authorities would make for a weak theological argument.'

Gosh, surely they were written using eyewitness testimony. How could they not be authoritative if everybody knew they were simply recording all the oral tradition that was being passed around anyway, and which was authoritative?

ApostateAbe

None of the gospels claim to be eyewitness accounts. The gospel of Luke is explicit on the point that it wasn't eyewitness testimony, and gospel of John claimed to be merely sourced from an eyewitness (John 21:24). The ancients, at least according to Bart Ehrman, placed more trust in oral accounts than written accounts. Speaking to someone face-to-face allows for questions, clarifications, and verisimilitude (writings can be forged).

Steven Carr

I see.

So somebody wrote in John 21 that this was authoritatively true, which proves that the reason nobody quotes from it, is simply because it was not authoritative - not because it never existed until just a few years before we start to see quotes from it.

At least you seem to agree that the written accounts were not the same as the oral accounts.

And that people thought that these Gospels could have been forgeries.

I guess if you are going to create a fictional Jesus who never existed, your work will be questioned - just like Case implies it was.

ApostateAbe

No disagreement.

Vorkosigan

it would be better to drop the term "hyper-skeptical" since it doesn't describe any known author and exists merely as a coded pejorative adjective which refers to a skeptic training his guns on an area that makes the user of the term uncomfortable.