Your saying "I don't believe that" etc. to my "If one sets out to" etc. statement is not clear. Are you implying that I'm implying that too many coincidences are needed to flesh out the MJ argument against pagan sources (which I am)? Or are you implying something else? As I say, not clear. But I'm proceeding on the assumption that it's the former.
Since there is more than one pagan source, they are the stronger therefore. Many here are perfectly conversant with all of them, and they are also conversant with the arguments against them that I find so dubious because they call for such a sequence of coincidental scenarios. There will also be a number here who will probably say that I'm somehow trying to prove something. As I already said in my previous, any responsible historian cannot deal with proof, only with greater or lesser likelihoods. Anyone here who imputes an effort at establishing proof in what I write here is going after a straw man, since I am only showing what is more likely, as any responsible secular historian would. Furthermore, some here will probably concentrate on one argument with respect to one textual passage, or another argument with respect to another, etc., obscuring the fact that a whole assortment of coincidental arguments are needed for a whole array of texts of similar character. If we get away from the odd coincidences needed to discount an array of similar textual references as a group, we get away from my chief point here. Also, the poster here who has lodged this inquiry has long ago made up his mind about my contributions here (
http://www.freeratio.org/showpost.ph...3&postcount=25), so I am addressing his(?) challenge here for the general readership on this board and not for the poster him(?)self, whose continued constructive engagement in this exchange will be a pleasant surprise.
Some in this thread have already enumerated some of the pagan sources I will be citing. That doesn't make the arguments against their viability as a group any less ad hoc. Yes, Josephus's Antiquities is definitely one, and Tacitus's Annals is definitely another. More specifically, the passage in Antiquities that is the hardest to debunk is 20.9.1. --
"Since Ananus was that kind of person, and because he perceived an opportunity with Festus having died and Albinus not yet arrived, he called a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought James, the brother of Jesus (who is called 'Messiah') along with some others. He accused them of transgressing the law, and handed them over for stoning. But as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done. They also sent to the king, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified. Nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrin without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done. On which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him, when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest."
Here, some arguments that have been trotted out against its viability as confirming a historical Jesus include --
The entire reference to Jesus ("the brother of Jesus (who is called 'Messiah')") is an interpolation --
There's already a Jesus further down in the paragraph, a Jesus Damneides, so it's probably the same Jesus here, making the words "(who is called 'Messiah')" an interpolation --
The word order is strange, suggesting some tampering with the text.
The argument that the whole clause is an interpolation has also been used against other passages we're dealing with here. One can either suppose that it is or it isn't. By the time that that argument is used against three or four such passages and not just one, it starts losing its force as a valid argument. I'll return to this at the end of the post.
As for Jesus Damneides, if the Jesus referred to at the top of this passage as brother of James is really Damneides, then how come the later reference to Jesus also spells out that he is Jesus Damneides rather than simply Jesus. Josephus is not prone to giving two identical descriptions in one and the same paragraph. If he bothers in the later reference to spell out that that Jesus is Damneides, then the Jesus referenced earlier is _more likely_ to be a different Jesus. There would be no need to reiterate that the later Jesus is Damneides if the earlier Jesus is the same person -- unless the later Damneides description is also an interpolation, but there we get back to the coincidence game of the MJ argument again. Just how often can one fall back on the interpolation gambit?
As for the strange word order, the literal word order in the original "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ [tou legomenou Christou], whose name was James" is characteristic of Josephus:
Wars 2.21.1
a man of Gischala, the son of Levi, whose name was Johnâ;
Ant. 5.8.1
but he had also one that was spurious, by his concubine Drumah, whose
name was Abimelech;
Ant. 11.5.1
Now about this time a son of Jeshua, whose name was Joacim, was the
high priest.
This is a good example of why one should be steeped in the writing style before plunging in with both feet.
The other reference in Antiquities is 18.63. --
"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not cease. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life. For the prophets of God had prophesied these and myriads of other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still up to now, not disappeared."
Aspects of this passage have been singled out as possibly bogus and not natural to Josephus. Some have recently suggested the whole passage is an interpolation (that old standby), while for many, many decades previous to that, scholars have instead singled out phrases like "if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly", "He was the Messiah", "upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing among us", and "On the third day he appeared to them restored to life" as being suspect. Well, it is notable that well after these phrases had already occasioned some general suspicion among a number of careful secular scholars, another version of the passage subsequently surfaced that was apparently dated slightly earlier than any other extant ms. of Antiquitees. This was an Arabic quotation in Agapios' Kitab al-'Unwan ("Book of the Title") --
-- "Similarly Josephus the Hebrew. For he says in the treatises that he has written on the governance of the Jews:
At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders."
Note that none of the suspect phrases are here in this citation. Is that just a coincidence? This makes it less likely that 18.63 was interpolated wholesale, after all. Way before this Syriac fragment in Arabic of this version of the passage is found, we have scholars already singling out precisely the phrases that are missing in the Syriac version. The fact that a version was _subsequently_ found, and that that version was earlier than any other text of the work, and that that ms. lacked precisely the same suspect phrases, would appear to confirm some scholars' previous guesses that there was an earlier version somewhere that wouldn't have those phrases. Well, they were probably right.
The fact that the Syriac version doesn't have those phrases may not necessarily prove conclusively that the rest of the passage is genuine after all, but it does point to an astounding coincidence when a version previously posited by scholars as a mere hypothesis suddenly turns up and is confirmed as genuinely earlier than any text of the complete work that we have. Evidently, those scholars were on to something. Either we view what was discovered as an extreme coincidence, and a very unlikely one, or this plainly earlier ms. plainly confirms what most scholars had guessed all along: The suspect phrases were never in the original but the passage as a whole was.
What this early version also shows is that the Messiah reference here comes from a citation of claims made by posthumous followers of Jesus, not from Josephus's own perspective.
Some claim that the very term "christ" would be anathema to Josephus. He'd never even use it. Moreover, if he used it, he wouldn't use it without explaining it in detail. I simply don't see the need for Josephus to explain a term that had come to be applied to a notorious convict? It was the term by which he was known; it was the term Josephus used <shrug>. I don't see the need for Josephus to explain the reason for that term. Some claim Josephus would only see it as a reference to plaster, and that's it. But once a notorious convict gets a nickname, he is recognizable under that nickname. There's no mystery here at all.
I don't see a need for Josephus to explain this usage of "Christ".
Actually, an explanation of sorts is offered by Josephus in the restored shorter version of the 18.63 passage in the Syriac fragment: There, the use of the term is confined to the context of an implied quote from Jesus's posthumous followers in connection with their delusion that the dead Jesus had walked among them. Josephus cites such followers as claiming he walked among them and that "_accordingly_, he was perhaps the Messiah" [emphasis mine] they had been waiting for.
Josephus thus makes it clear that it was those followers who had applied the term to Jesus because Jesus walked among the living. Josep. evidently sees no reason to explain this usage beyond that.
If Josephus's reference to a "Christ" nickname is so anachronistic to an ancient Roman audience, then how do we account for
Ant. 3:198 (to anoint a priest);
6:83 (to anoint Saul with holy oil), 157 (to anoint a son of Jesse to be the Israelite king in place of Saul), 159 (to anoint a specific youth as above);
7:357 (the high priest and Nathan the prophet anoint Solomon with oil as king David's designated successor), 382 (repeat of Solomon's anointing with oil after David's death);
9:106 (a disciple of Elisha the prophet is given holy oil to anoint Jehu as king), 149 (7 yr old Jehoash is anointed king by the high priest Jehoiada);
19:239 (Agrippa the Jew anoints his head with oil before visiting the Roman Senate to mediate Claudius' appointment as emperor)
On to Suetonius: The Life of Claudius (25.4)
"As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he expelled them from Rome."
Fuss is occasionally made over "Chrestus", but "Chrestus" and "Christus" are often interchangeable in old mss. Also, the lag-time between Suetonius and Jesus' own life-time is trotted out, but this lag-time is normal for figures of such antiquity. Should we throw them all out?
Plenty of historic figures would have to be wiped from the historic record altogether if one can get away with this kind of special pleading in this one instance. Not only are the overwhelmingly secular historians (when not entirely non-believers like my father, who was a college history professor and shared a strongly skeptical perspective with many colleagues in his department) not claiming the historicity of some magic conjuror as described in Scripture. Not only are the overwhelmingly secular historians (when not entirely non-believers like my father and many in his department) claiming instead the historicity of an entirely human non-magic Jesus whose mundane life is all too clearly referenced in Tacitus and Josephus, without a whiff of the supernatural about him. But the strictly non-Scriptural references to a consistently human figure consistently devoid of any miracles and consistently found in the Josephan and Tacitan sorts of chronicles are entirely comparable, both in their (relative) scarcity and in their lag time from the subject's death, as well as in the uniformly mundane things that are said about them, to 100% of the primary sources that we have on central figures like Hannibal and Boudica, all of which are posthumous. That's right: That's fully comparable to the entirely posthumous primary sources that we have on Hannibal and Boudica, period -- and on hundreds of others from those ancient times as well.
So do we get rid of figures like Hannibal and Boudica as well? If we do, then that means getting rid of well over half the historic figures of the ancient world in addition to Hann., Boud. and Jes., leaving only mega-kings and emperors like Alexander, Caesar, etc., intact. Happy with that? If not, then once figures like Hannibal are let back in instead, Jesus would also have to get back into the historic record as well. Otherwise, we're being inconsistent. If we take others but not the one, then we adopt the same kind of half-assed cafeteria approach to history that the Creationist adopts toward science. Happier with that?
On to Tacitus: Annals - c.115AD
Annals, 15:44
"Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom. The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina. Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess. And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women. But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order. Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed."
Here, the MJ-er will sometimes trot our arguments that include --
We are asked to believe that the passage may be an interpolation (again!) --
that Tacitus only got his info from some Christians (when he detested them) --
that Pilate was no procurator, since that title was not in existence at the time of Tiberius.
In fact, Latin philologists dealing with Tacitean texts in detail often stress the extent to which Tacitus adopts a highly distinctive, advanced and polished style of Latin that more or less disappears entirely after Tacitus's death. That whole style is a lost art within a generation or so after Tacitus is gone. It would be very unlikely for someone to come along who can imitate such a style at the time that MJ-ers claim any interpolations would have been made (ca. 3rd-5th century). And this particular passage has a style identical to the rest of the text.
As for its merely being Christians' hearsay here, Tacitus stresses early on in his work that wherever he merely uses hearsay, he is careful to specify that (and indeed he does). Since he makes no such specification here, and since his style here is the same as elsewhere, the only argument left is the anachronism of "procurator". Here, I've seen just as strong an argument being made that the anachronism of "procurator" proves the text comes from Tacitus, since that was what someone in a comparable position would have been termed in Tacitus's time.
In looking over this whole assemblage of texts, one cannot overstress the extent to which the sheer assemblage of argument after argument here weakens rather than strengthens upon repetition in too many different contexts for comfort. Sheer multiplicity goes against the principle of Occam's Razor, for one thing. Isn't it just piling on suppositions a bit too much to suppose that in one passage an interpolation is involved, in another sheer hearsay (Tacitus), in another an alternate spelling that is "really" a different word(!) (Suetonius), and so on and so on? In the end, such an assemblage of suppositions stubs its toe against Occam's Razor.
In fact, piling up arguments in such an ad hoc way is arguing like a lawyer, not like a scholar.
A scholar looks at the documentation and ponders what is most likely. Looking at these extant referenc
ES as a bunch in the pagan world, it becomes more likely than not that a real historic figure is being referenced rather than a myth. One can make one argument against one text and another against another, etc. -- and if one is pressed, one can make the same argument against a number of them(!): interpolation(!) -- but that only underscores the forced nature of these arguments. There are too many such piled-on arguments needed for the basic MJ position itself not to emerge as a position of faith rather than a position of reason and greater likelihood. It is more likely than not, given the pagan sources, that Jesus -- a human, non-miraculous Jesus as described in the pagan sources -- was a historical figure, and it becomes less likely that he is a myth.
I'm perfectly aware that any number of arguments can be made against this passage or that one, etc. But I've yet to see any MJ-er address this overriding question: Why, with the numbers here what they are, does it seem necessary to counter one passage one way and another passage another way and another passage yet another way, etc. -- not to mention the frequent fallback on the interpolation gambit, which only seems to hold up for the inserted phrases missing in the Arabic quotation of Antiq. 18.63 -- all pointing to an excessive pattern of special pleading, when such a number of different passages have to be discounted again and again, in grossly and repeatedly hypothetical ways (re the interpolation gambit, etc.)? That basic question has yet to be addressed above all.
What is revealed in these tortured and repeated arguments in passage after passage is that the MJ argument becomes an argument for the lesser likelihood in each pagan textual case. That is why it becomes an argument from faith, while the HJ argument shows strictly what becomes instead more likely in each pagan textual case.
Chaucer
12-06-2010, 11:59 AM
