Rick Sumner

Just wanted to comment on this one a little more on further reflection, because while I suspect you're wrong about Herodotus, you are right about something general to the study of history that I don't think many here are really aware of, most of us having spent our days in this one niche study of history.

The bar, in general, is lower--pretty well everywhere--outside of history of religions in general, and Biblical crit in particular. And assuming that was the point you were trying to make in this last paragraph, you are fundamentally correct.

For a neat example, I just read (or in the case of three papers, re-read) The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, wherein no less than 6 papers by separate scholars cite the infamous "last words" recorded by Suetonius. Of those six, only one so much as suggests they might not be authentic.

These words would fail even the most generous tests of authenticity for the NT. I can think of no good argument for accepting them, and half a dozen not to. Yet for many Augustan scholars, the fact that Suetonius records them is good enough.

Toto

It's not an especially atheist or theist position. Historians do not react as if it is some sort of lunacy - they admit that it is a possibility.

What part of "shooting from the hip" passed over your head?

PhilosopherJay

Hi ApostateAbe,

There is quite strong evidence for the existence of Socrates. We have three well known named sources who wrote works independent of any mention of Socrates, who wrote detailed works centering on him: Aristophanes, Plato, and Xenophon. All three were contemporary with Socrates. Aristophanes wrote a play about him called "Clouds." Aristophanes usually used contemporary known citizens of Athens as characters in his plays, so this strongly suggests the existence of Socrates. If he did not exist, the play would not be very funny. Plato also used contemporary well-known citizens of Athens in his dialogues. Xenophon also is known for his military histories and doesn't apparently invent any characters at all, so his "Memoirs of Socrates" is an excellent third independent source. A fourth source is Aristotle who was a student of Plato for some 18 years. He refers to Socrates as a historical person. Since he has contempt for many of Plato's ideas and philosophical positions, one would expect him to criticize Plato for inventing the Socrates character if he had the slightest inkling that Socrates was not real. Aristotle accepts the historical nature of Socrates without question. There are also, as I recall, several speeches that are preserved from orators from the half century following Socrates that treat him as a real person.

This is quite different from the situation with Jesus where we fail to find any well known contemporary independent writer writing about him. It is not until some 150 years after his alleged death that we start to get independent writers like Celsus attesting to his life, but he gets all his information from unknown Christian sources.

No writer that I know of has ever questioned the existence of Socrates. The only thing that gives me pause in questioning Socrates' existence is the first dialogue of Plato's entitled "Euthyphro". The character of Euthyphro is a soothsayer who is putting his father on trial for murder. The circumstances of the case seem too theatrical to be real. It is a great coincidence that Socrates, a father figure, put on trial by the citizens of Athens for his impiety towards the Gods should meet a man putting his actual father on trial, who claims this is an act of piety towards the Gods. In fact, Plato makes Euthyphro look like a fool for putting his father on trial when the will of the gods is difficult to know. By analogy, the moral of the dialogue is that the Athenians are foolish for putting their father (Socrates) on trial without knowing the will of the Gods. There is an interesting reversal here, the Athenians accuse Socrates of not knowing the will of the Gods, but only imagining he knows it through his daimon, and Plato is reversing this by saying that it is the Athenians who do not know the will of the Gods, but only imagine they do through their soothsayers like Euthyphro. In short, Euthyphro is a character used simply to make a political point. He may have existed, but it is most probable that he never met Socrates on the way to the lawcourt that fateful day in 400 B.C.E. If Plato was so skillful at inventing the lie of the encounter at the law court, one has to ask what else he made up?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

ApostateAbe

OK, I admit that the non-existence of Jesus is a possibility, too, and I still think of it is still a facepalm claim fueled mostly by wishful thinking. The claim that Socrates never existed would be resisting the evidence more but it would lack the wishful thinking. Therefore, I imagine that historians of the Archaic period would react even more horribly to a group of ideologues who had an interest in promoting the idea that Socrates never existed. There could be some groups much like that out there. I know that Lyndon Larouche had a few such weird historical ideas.

ApostateAbe

Philosopher Jay, thank you, that was very informative.

Steven Carr

That is probably why historicists don't like to answer the question of what evidence there is for Judas, Nicodemus, Lazarus, Bartimaeus, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Salome, Martha, Thomas, Joseph of Arimathea, Simon of Cyrene, Barabbas etc etc.

This cast of Gospel characters that not even Christians mentioned in their letters is so lacking in corroboration that mainstream Biblical historians just have to assume these people existed.

Steven Carr

MCGRATH
Historians are confident Jesus existed, first and foremost, because we have sayings attributed to him and stories about him that are more likely authentic than inauthentic.

CARR
Do we have any sayings of people of 2000 years ago that came from oral tradition?

Caesar 'Vene . vidi, vici' Did he really say that?

Can historians establish that a person X of 2000 years ago said saying Y , a saying transmitted orally to other people, until written down by a non-eyewitness of the original saying?

Just checking if mainstream Biblical historians use the same methods that other historians of 2000 years ago do.....

Doug Shaver

It would be relevant to ask why ideologues of any kind might have such an interest . . . the point being that there is no group to which their interest could be in opposition. That is, there is no current ideology whose validity is contingent on Socrates' historicity. Nobody and no group has any strong feelings about anything concerning which the man's existence or nonexistence would make a bit of difference.

With Jesus, that is not the case. And that has something to do with how people react to any suggestions that he might not have been a real person.

maryhelena

Neil has now put up an excellent blog post in reply to McGrath's blog post.....so, the debate continues...

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/02/...ers/#more-5164

Civil1z@tion

Here I disagree. Herodotus cares about facts or else he wouldn't offer so many alternative stories. He simply asks us to determine which story is most plausible.

You're obsessed with tangential stories and details. Does it really matter if Herodotus was probably wrong that the Battle of Himera happened on the same day as the Battle of Salamis? No because the story still shows us that at about the same time the Greeks in Hellas were under attack, the Greeks in Megale Hellas were also fighting invaders. That narrative is correct.

Sure Solon and Croesus didn't meet, but the stories of Solon leaving Athens after giving his laws are pre-Herodotus and so why couldn't that story have come from before Herodotus?

On what basis would you call it a deliberate lie rather than a received tale?

Yes history has made progress over time and Annals was more historical than History, but that doesn't mean we should dismiss Herodotus as a historical source.

So if they are proved to not be lieing then how are then unreliable?

There are dividing lines between what is believable in Herodotus and what is not and they aren't hard to see. Should we believe Solon visited Croesus or that Artemesia was the voice of reason when preparing for the battle of Salamis? Probably not. But should we believe Themistocles used bribes and deceit to get his way or that the Greeks would ask Gelon of Syracuse for help and be rejected? Sure we should. There is both myth and history in Herodotus and we can make out the difference simply by seeing what aspects of the story have a myth-format and what aspects are more realistic. Will we still get a few detail wrong? Sure, even modern historians get details wrong. But that does not remove the value of Herodotus as a source.

Simply apply some logic to find the areas where he isn't credible and you're left with a still extensive and useful narrative. Exactly like much of the bible. You don't have to believe that every myth that happened in the bible is true to believe a lot of the basic story (like that there was a cult leader in Judea and Galilee in the 1st century AD or that Israel was able to form a kingdom at the point when the former empire in the regions were in retreat). Just because something has myths in it does not make it a mythological text.