spamandham

That's a good answer, and it's the same answer I have to the same question you posed.

It's possible that the author (whether Paul or someone else) didn't want to complicate his theological point by needlessly dragging Mary into the discussion, or perhaps Mary was the icon of a rival subcult. It's also possible that Mary is a literary character that had not been invented yet at the time it was penned. I'm sure there are more possibilities as well, some of which might slightly favor an early penning, and some maybe favor a later pen.

Russellonius

Those most coming under penalty of the Law socially (as opposed to metaphysically) were those who were criticized by their peers for failing to keep the Law. Religion is a purely social phenomenon when we exclude the supernatural from consideration.

Forward-thinking "Jews" two hundred-some years prior to the first century sought a way to end the hold of ancestral law on the behavior of the progressively minded elites who wanted to move ahead of Mosaic covenantal thinking. They thought their reforms would filter down to the masses, but that was a mistake. I'm referring to Jason and Menelaus soliciting permission from Antiochus IV Epiphanes for permission to alter Temple practices in Jerusalem. The result was a popular uprising that threw the progressives from power, noting their legal transgressions in the texts they wrote - Maccabees 1 & 2.. The resulting Hasmonean dynasty itself lost power eventually resulting in a situation similar to the one under Antiochus earlier - an 'illegitimate' priesthood appointed by imperial collaborators. Herodians were also criticized by conservatives for their failure to adhere to the customs. Our texts indicate they did not take kindly to criticism of their behavior with regard to the Law.

Jesus Christ, functioning as a valid surrogate, was a substitute for animal sacrifice to God/gods for progressive Jerusalem elites who had been ready to abandon archaic practices and embrace a new age for over two hundred years. It was a much better marketing effort than those to which the Maccabees had objected. Who needs a Temple, with its embarrassing archaisms, after Jesus died for our sins? Plus, now you get to live forever! That may be why they, the Christians, prevailed over the covenant renewal movement said to have been led by a historical Jesus.

I suggest that Paul did not include biographical details about Jesus because they were unknown to him. Paul's activity was in oppositional reaction to the covenant renewal movement and their claims, first using violence, then rhetoric.

It should also be considered that the majority demographic of "Jews" at the time were Diasporan and according to the covenant renewal group legally could eat only vegetables due to lack of proximity to the Temple - the only legitimate place to sacrifice animals to YHWH, and it had been that way for centuries. Jesus' sacrifice allowed them to eat meat with no twinge of conscience, other than when they were seen and confronted by traditionalists (during Paul's time).

I learned a useful technique from Marianne Sawicki. She suggested in Crossing Galilee that the answers will not be found by more careful examination of the texts, but by picturing "flow" - what flowed from where to where? Then fill in the details from the available evidence to figure out how it got there.

Why did the practice of animal sacrifice end among humans? Jesus the Christ, to whatever extent real or imagined, and his atoning death on the cross seems to be at the center of the answer to this question.

mountainman

Why then does the only historian of this Jesus the Christ, Eusebius of Caesarea, defer to the figure of Apollonius of Tyana as an authority on the abstinence of animal sacrifice?

See Apollonius of Tyana

Noack [Psyche, I ii.5.] tells us that scholarship
is convinced of the genuineness of this fragment.
This book, as we have seen, was widely circulated
and held in the highest respect, and it said that
its rules were engraved on brazen pillars
at Byzantium.

Toto

I don't see how this can be. Jewish animal sacrifice ended when the Temple was destroyed. Pagan animal sacrifice continued, and I have seen ethnographic films of rituals in northern Greece that are nominally Christian, but involve what looks like animal sacrifice.

Crossing Galilee: architectures of contact in the occupied land of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Marianne Sawicki on google books

aa5874

Once Jesus was just a man known to have lived in Galilee for about 30 years and was a Jew then he would have been regarded as having NO religious or social advantage over other Jews and ALL of mankind.

Whether religion is purely social or not is irrelevant once Jesus was just a Jewish man since such a view cannot account for a Pauline writer claiming Jesus was the Creator of heaven and earth, before anything was made, and was EQUAL to God, or for the reason why an author of a Gospel claimed Jesus was the offspring of a Ghost of God.


Sacrifice of animals was backward and even the sacrifice of humans was considered MURDER by early Christians. Once Jesus was just a man and sacrificed to a God then such would be MURDER according to some early Christians.

See Municius Felix "Octavius" 30 The Pauline writings were primarily and fundamentally about the AFTER LIFE of Jesus, the resurrected Life. The Pauline writers was supposed to be corroborative sources for the RESURRECTION.

The Pauline writers were apostles of and got their gospel from the RESURRECTED one.

Well, you must mean that the Jews could then eat humans. Jesus was a man who was sacrificed to a God.

The Jews could now eat the entrails of Jesus and all mankind?

You are not making much sense.

Complete nonsense. It cannot be shown that Sacrifice of humans and Cannibalism did end when the fiction stories called Gospels were written.

neilgodfrey

I think when we speak of Professional Historical Methodology and Argument for the Best Explanation, we are missing the first step when talking about HJ/MJ.

Whether or not Julius Caesar or Mrs Socrates existed are not historical questions. Unless you are an ultra-postmodernist historian, you start with some facts before you even think about what PHM to apply or what ABE is going to work.

In the case of the HJ question, the reason I sometimes try to say I am not "a mythicist" is because that term suggests (as in Doherty's case) an advocacy position. Historical enquiry is not, at least when it is behaving at its best, that sort of advocacy.

Historians don't try to reconstruct the historical Socrates. They would be wasting their time. There is insufficient evidence. (Sound familiar?) They may in passing speculate. But there is no substantive cultural or faith issue involved so it's a non issue.

What they do is seek to understand the nature and origins of early Greek philosophy. That may lead them to speak sometimes of Socrates as a historical person, but I think what they will really be meaning is that he is representative of a certain development, literary voice for Plato, etc.

The historical question in regards to Christianity is the same. What are its origins and nature, etc?

What we have are source documents, texts. Even Albert Schweitzer wrote in his Quest

So the way to handle the texts is not to presume, in the absence of external controls, that their narratives pertain to real history. That is to make a judgment for which we have no warrant. (It does not mean we say they are not historical; it means we have no way of deciding without bringing in additional evidence).

They need to be studied for what they are: texts, and worse, unprovenanced texts. (Not testimony, or evidence, etc -- all of those views are pre-judging them. We don't know if they are testimony or evidence until we do a bit of work on them.)

Even a historian as famous as Eric Hobsbawm was caught out when he relied on uncorroborated narratives about certain South American "social bandits". He conceded his error with the truism that in every case a narrative -- even one claiming to be an eyewitness report -- needs to be corroborated for its historicity.

This is so obvious it is not really deserving of being called a "methodology". It is basic grandfatherly wisdom. Don't believe everything you hear or read. "'Grandfather' of modern history" Von Ranke addressed it. Niels Peter Lemche reminded OT historians of it, and he and fellow minimalists did such a good job that they have made significant inroads into turning OT studies around in significant measure. (Lemche in fact discusses "the von Ranke game" in one of his publications. The key is to understand the difference between primary evidence or sources and secondary sources, claims, etc.)

By treating the OT texts as texts and not as (uncorroborated) sources of historical narratives, the way was opened to use less circular and more justifiable methodology that has tended in various degrees to significantly redate them, and to assign them provenances once rarely considered, and to make literary and historical judgments about the origin and themes of their narratives that have rewritten much of the history of Israel and the OT literature itself, and that have opened up new explanations about the origins of their narratives and relationships with one other. Biblical David and Abraham have not survived this process, but at least we have a more justifiable and supportable history in their place.

Why not start with grandpa's advice and see what happens with early Christian texts in our exploration of Christian origins?

That means admitting we don't know who wrote them, or when, or even much of why. It means approaching every word in them for what it literally is -- a literary word, a bit of text. This is starting from scratch. We need to first work out how to interpret and understand them as literary texts. That might sound bleedingly obvious, but it is very rare in biblical studies. Most biblical historians are reading all sorts of historical and contextual assumptions into them without having first gone about any, or very minimal, justifying process.

It also means attempting to establish and explain their narratives and existence and functions in their earliest external (not subjective and circular internal) witnesses and corroborated contexts. (Internal evidence has to have some external control as a foundation or else it will lead to little more than circular arguments.)

Once that job is done, I think we can start to make some interesting historical inquiries into Christian origins.

I think JW's starting questions go some way to addressing the right questions, but I think they need to be closely crafted around the documents or sources as "unknown texts" -- to avoid circular assumptions. We need to be clear on what we mean by “source” and what we mean by “evidence” or “data”, if we indeed do think of them differently. If not, why not?

For example:

Does not “source” imply something that is secondary to another question? Source of/for what? Are we not prejudicing the inquiry at the outset by imputing some “for what” idea into “the source?

Is there any logical necessity that a more distant source must be less reliable in matters of fact or accuracy than a source that is less distant?

Less distant from what? What is “the object”? Is it some data within the narrative of the source itself? In which case, if that is the only knowledge we have of “the object”, then the source is literally no distance at all from “the object”. “The object” may be embedded in the source. Thus to treat such an “object” as really outside the source itself, is to make the logical error of assuming the historicity of the narrative of the source before we even start. We are letting the narrative world become our historical world if we do that.

This is why external controls are an essential first step before we can make any assumptions about historicity underlying the narrative.

As for bias, this is inevitable and does not necessarily mean it does not contain accurate information. An imperial coin with an emperor’s bust is “biased propaganda”. This is primarily an issue for interpretation, not for establishing credibility per se.




Again, this goes back to point #1. What is implied by the term “source”? Are we not getting into a circularity here?


There are several questions here. One is how old is the earliest manuscript -- the earliest physical manuscript? Another is whether or not, or to what extent, this physical text’s contents can be traced back earlier, and how far? What is the external evidence? Relying on internal evidence is dangerous because of the potential for circularity. We need to start with external evidence.



Again, what do we mean here exactly? Other (even independent) sources may agree or say similar things, but does it necessarily follow that the reason they do so is because they have a common interest in reporting accurate information for us?




For this we really need information about authors and redactors, provenance, responses to the source, etc.




Show no mercy has already kindly linked to it, but I try to clarify the basics of historical methods (before we get to historical philosophy and how to methodically research and explain facts etc) here.

Neil

andrewcriddle

I don't think you are correct here. At least some students of Ancient Greek Philosophy try and distinguish between the historical Socrates and Socrates as the mouthpiece of Plato. You may feel that thet are misguided to try and do so, but that is a different issue.

Andrew Criddle

spamandham

This is obvious to any objective person I think. It's amazing to see the contorted arguments even apostates will invent to explain away Paul's silence about the biographical details of Jesus.

Once you accept the blatantly obvious, you are left dealing with the implications of it. The implications are unkind to those promoting some kind of a Jesus exegized from the absurd Gospel stories.

mountainman

neilgodfrey,

Quite a monumental post which appears to directly address ...

the serious problems we all have to face because of the
current devaluation of the notion of evidence and of the
corresponding overappreciation of rhetoric and idealogy
as instruments for the analysis of the literary sources.

[Momigliano]

I am sure that I and JW and others here have much to meditate upon in this region of theory space in which the historical methodology for Historical Jesus arguments, Mythical Jesus arguments, and Fabricated Jesus arguments share common ground and coordinate systems so to speak.

Your notes at the blog site are very timely.

Historical Facts and the very UNfactual Jesus: contrasting nonbiblical history with ‘historical Jesus’ sham methodology

Keep up the great work!

mountainman

At least some students of Ancient history try and distinguish between the historical Jesus and Jesus as the mouthpiece of Constantine and Eusebius. Many people may feel they are misguided to try and do so, but that is a different issue.

I think at the end of the day what neilgodfrey is referring to as the "first step" is to start with some "evidence" or "facts". The assessment of Albert Schweitzer cited exemplifies the issue clearly (IMO) ...

We are dealing IMO not with an Historical Jesus but rather we are dealing with hypothetically historical jesus. The HJ is not a "fact". It is just one hypothesis out of a number of alternative hypotheses that are to be framed within the field of ancient history -- (not "Biblical History").