aa5874

This is really interesting.

EarlDoherty

You’ll have to forgive me for late or incomplete responses, as I’m engaged in other work at this time, and there is so much to respond to. But let’s see what I can do.

First, Kevin. Without quoting, I’ll note that he, as others have done, brings up the question as to why there is no witness to Pauline mythicism. I have to presume that he means in the 2nd century, because there is plenty of it in the 1st, namely in all the epistles, in 1 Clement (if that’s still in the 1st century), and elements of Ignatius share space with the newly developing historicism. Elements of classic Gnosticism (as in the Gospel of Truth) are a brand of mythicism. Kevin says that “the proto-orthodox talked about heresies and tried to refute them.” But that “talk” took place only in the latter 2nd century, and those “proto-orthodox” were largely the former mythicists. (I have traced a suggested direct line of development from 1 Clement, through Ignatius (who went to Rome) and from there we jump a few decades to the Church of Rome in Justin’s time which by now had swallowed the Gospels whole and believed in an historical Jesus.) Someone else (can’t find it right at the moment) pointed out that mythicism evolved into historicism, and the former died out. To complicate matters, another parallel branch of Son/Logos belief was strong in the 2nd century, and it is represented by a slew of documents by surviving apologists, who were later interpreted as being believers in an HJ, even though they gave no evidence of it in their writings (Athenagoras, Theophilus, Minucius Felix, earlier Tatian). I would also suggest that Ignatius and 1 John 4 do in fact argue against those who disagree with the new historicism. As for specifically Pauline mysticism, scholars have noted that there is no sign of Paul’s theology having any influence on the 2nd century at all, except in his co-opting by Gnostics and Marcion. This indicates the fragmentation and diversity of early “Christ” thought and why there may have been so much on that broad movement’s plate that 1st century ideas were lost sight of as the 2nd century progressed.

On my analogy. I don’t see any conflict because my analogy is on a “modern situation”. It simply illustrates the principle involved. It’s not the rise of Christianity that is “analogous” to my husband and wife, it’s the reasoning involved in the respective situations.

And you need to be careful about your own analogies. Sai Baba? I’ve never heard of him, and none of my reference books have either (though I don’t have a “history of India”). Everyone’s heard of Jesus, and no later history about the time fails to mention him as an historical figure. In any case, you are speaking of historians. Your analogy would only fit with 1st century historians, not Christian writers. I daresay you would be vastly more perplexed if a member of Sai Baba’s movement, living virtually contemporaneous with his life, wrote about his faith (or whatever it was) and failed to make it clear that this founder had just lived on earth or mentioned any details of his life.

Similarly with the Thera eruption, though I’m not familiar with the details of this alleged “silence”. What historians contemporary or near-contemporary to this event fail to mention it? In fact, what historians do we have at all from the 15th century BCE (I believe Thera is dated around 1450)? It is not a case of something being “noted by the ancients” to the extent we would like to see, it is of someone being noted by his very followers and proselytizers who are actually talking about the figure they worship and preach, not only without giving us any details, or even the fact of, his recent life, but who present their faith movement in ways which actually make no room for him or even exclude him. This goes far beyond your own analogies.

And I’ll jump ahead on the thread an include Ben’s observations on my analogy here.

Precisely. Actually, Ben, you’ve presented my analogy in exact relationship to the situation we find in Paul. There is both silence (lack of testimony) and positive statement about the situation. (As you may know, I have called the latter “positive silences”.) I have asked everyone to evaluate both together: the lack of testimony about an HJ, and the positive testimony about Paul’s own faith movement which presents something which is complete without an HJ and even excludes him or defines him in ways which are not compatible with an HJ. Is Paul lying in the latter? If Paul says he learned about the Son through scripture and revelation, are the Gospels not calling him a liar? If whoever wrote Titus (1:3) says that God made promises in the distant past and the first action on those promises is the preaching of the Gospel by such as Paul, is ‘Titus’ calling the Gospel writers liars? Or are they all dancing around in their own parts of the country? And should we stop trying to impose the nature and characteristics of one part of the landscape on another?

Moreover, you are imposing on the widow that it is her job to convince the acquaintance. Hardly. The widow’s testimony is much closer to the deceased. No reasonable person is going to choose the former’s over the latter’s testimony, unless the acquaintance can come up with something which absolutely trumps her. The Gospels, with their later minority witness which is all comprised of midrash on scripture hardly trumps anybody. It’s as if the acquaintance, and he alone, brought forward a letter from the husband, or a cancelled check, which in any case proved to be a forgery or lifted out of a Harry Potter novel.

Kevin, I think you have it backwards. The Razor would suggest that if we don’t find an HJ in the epistles, we should not “create this new entity.” If the Gospels appear decades after Paul, and there is no witness prior to them (and in many documents after them) of the “faith” contained in them, then you are the one who is contravening Occam’s Razor by positing a faith in the epistles based on the later Gospels which those epistles give no witness to. And the faith they do give witness to presents a consistent self-contained picture which is shared more or less by all the documents of that pre-Gospel era. Sorry, your objection actually backfires on you.

Yes, I do, for two of them. Your middle one is not quite right. I have suggested that at least the first Gospel in regard to its actual story and the character of Jesus was written and initially received as allegory, though I leave open the possibility that Mark believed such an historical founder, as in Q, had existed. It would be very difficult to have a document coming from that transitory phase which spells this out. The remaining two are witnessed to by multiple documents. (The third has a form of “the Son” which is related to the mythical Christ, but not as a sacrificed god.) Are we not in the habit of “accepting” pictures that extant documents actually give us? Should we rather be in the habit of accepting pictures that are not present in a whole era of surviving witness? What you and previous centuries have done is take the picture presented in one minority (and the Gospels and their ideas are a slim minority within the documentary record of the first century and a half) set of documents and impose it on everything else. Moreover, the picture presented in that minority view (all of it demonstrably derived from a single literary source) has by now, thanks to modern critical scholarship, been so undermined we can scarcely find an element within it which can confidently be labeled history. So what you are doing is imposing shaky, if not totally unverifiable, “history” on a great many other documents which contain nothing resembling that “history” at all. And you question my methodology?

As for Vork, he indeed does bring up a point usually shunted aside or ignored. One possible remote interpretation to support an HJ interpretation in Paul is one thing. Coming up with allegedly possible interpretations to counter a host of opposite indicators is another. “Your Honor, my client was framed!” might work on one occasion. Appealing to it every time should get the attorney thrown out of the courtroom.

Now on to Rick.
I’m not trying to be offensive. While I haven’t followed every thread over the years on this subject, I can honestly say that right now I don’t remember a single argument you or others may have put forward to discredit the argument from silence in the context of whether Paul knew an HJ. Perhaps my memory really is failing me. And I presented my example about Paul not being able to preach and convert unless he did have an interest and knowledge of the HJ, because it is a good example of the general sort of thing I associate with those who denigrate the AFS. Perhaps you could give us a better example of the sort of “evidence” you have looked at which counters my use of the AFS, not theoretical stuff dismissing the AFS per se in principle, but in relation to the epistles themselves. If all you are referring to is the standard few items like “brother of the Lord,” “born of woman” and “kata sarka” (all of which have been dealt with by me and others) that’s not what I’m talking about. That doesn’t address the usages of the AFS in arguing for no presence of an HJ in the epistles.

Again, without specific examples it is impossible for me to evaluate this statement. I at least offered one example of what I meant. On my site I offer 200 of them, as well as deal thoroughly with those few that might be considered to lie on the other side.

Two things here. I know you’ve put forward suggestions as to the interpretation of Paul’s “real thrust.” I happen to think he’s got several of them, and evaluating what’s at the head of the list for him is difficult, if not irrelevant. My point has been that “Jesus [meaning the recent historical man known later through the Gospels] being the Son of God” would be an absolute necessity for that list. He is constantly going on about “faith”, but why is there no mention of the “faith that Jesus of Nazareth, the figure who underwent at least some of the ‘events’ later put into the Gospels, was the Son of God”? Can we envision an entire missionary career where questions, doubts, ridicules did not arise which would require Paul to be familiar with that human man and his activities and teachings, to talk about him in order to deal with such questions and doubts, to justify his blasphemous and unprecedented elevation of a crucified criminal to Godhead? Where is that ridicule and defense, for example, in talking about the "folly" of his gospel in 1 Corinthians 1?

I’m glad you enjoyed my “colorful” appendix, which of course was only a humorous example of the point. You say that we don’t know enough about Paul’s missionary preaching or background thinking to be able to rule out his knowledge or preaching of the historical Jesus. But here you are contravening a principle which I am constantly raising, and which I think was raised just in this thread, that we can’t base our conclusions on non-existent evidence. You are in fact in a contradiction. You refuse to base an interpretation of Paul as not knowing an HJ on what is actually to be found in his letters, namely on a presentation of his faith and object of worship in terms which do not point to a recent man, on a virtually blanket silence on any such historical figure, and instead base your conviction that he really does have an HJ in his background on the theoretical (and unfounded) presumption contained in your words that if we did know more about Paul, an HJ is what we would find there. The bottom line is, we don’t find that there, and we do find things which point in the opposite direction. That is what you should be basing your conclusions on, not a non-existent chimera, or a reading of later, incompatible documents into him.

You say that “You don't know any more about how Paul proselytized than anyone else does.” Of course not. But that doesn’t give you the right to read into him something that we don’t have, and which is not compatible with the way Paul presents things. And what I know about Paul is what he tells me, in the actual texts of his letters, which is the same thing he tells you. How we choose to interpret that is certainly “subjective” to an extent, but not because it is incapable of having any amount of objectivity brought to it. I spent half a book and a 200,000 word website arguing that an interpretation with as much objectivity as can be given to it would lead us to the conclusion I have put forward. I have yet to see anyone on the other side take the same texts, address the same observations about them, and manage to conclude that Paul knew an HJ. Again, “brother of the Lord” and “born of woman” do not fall into that category. And “kata sarka” is a separate question of how a given phrase can be interpreted in different contexts.

If you are making the claim that not a single poster on this board who disagrees with the mythicist position is not at least partly motivated by religious concerns, then I simply don’t believe it. (I’m not accusing you of lying, or even of misrepresenting your own views.) As such, my statement is not “nonsensical” at all, even if you disclaim it as applying to yourself (and I’ll accept that). But we are arguing in a field where religion has very much to do with it, even among some critical scholarship. No one bases his life and expectations of salvation on whether Shakespeare wrote the plays under that name. No one regards those who don’t believe in Shakespeare as being infidels and damned to hell. And no one gets as hot under the collar at the non-authorship of Shakespeare as they do at the non-existence of Jesus.

But alright, I promise not to bring up the point again. I would truly like to think that I am arguing against entirely objective historical positions and not religious ones.

Earl Doherty

spamandham

This is one of the closing points that Price makes in "The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man", and I think he does a good job of showing that this is part of an older Hymn that Paul borrowed, and it shows exactly what you suggest - that the name Jesus was given as a result of the crucifixion, and that whoever/whatever it was called before that was something else.

I might suggest that the prior name of this suffering servant was 'Israel'.

spamandham

This seems a bit pedantic. Obviously the word 'probable' is being used to mean 'parsimonious'. Rather than asking for scales and numbers, ask for arguments.

spamandham

Good assessment, considering that's what he calls himself.

dog-on

The problem with such a simple solution to the question is that, in so doing, Loomis may have single handedly destroyed an entire industry.

No, no...we'll have none of that! :devil:

Of course, this all makes perfect sense, in the larger view.

1. The author of the Epistles and the earliest "Christians" were not Jews.

2. This group found their sacred mystery in the Greek version of the Jewish scriptures.

3. As time went on, more and more midrashic elements were added to the religion... a story was written.

4. The rest, as they say, is history and is pretty well documented starting around the mid-second century...

Roger Pearse

Perhaps too many negatives there.

A statement: Every poster on this board who rejects JM is at least partly motivated by religious concerns.

A claim: that the statement is not true.

Earl's comment: he believes the statement is correct, and the claim is false.

If by 'motivated by religious concerns' means 'is a Christian', this is untrue of course.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Rick Sumner

Peter Kirby put together a nice argument against the entire excercise by pointing out another--more recent--author who meets all of your criteria but definitely knew an HJ that I'll try and track down for you, if you'd like.

But such broad efforts are going to be far and few between. Your AFS incorporates many different arguments, in regards to many different silences. So with that in mind, I'll kill two birds with one stone below, and point to a specific response to a specific argument that I know you've seen previously, because I've addressed it to you personally.

As an added bonus for now (which isn't what I'll present below), I've also discussed 2Peter with you at length, which, if my reading is correct, also calls the whole excercise into question--if my reading is correct, your criteria has failed to distinguish 2Peter from the Paulines. Without getting into whether or not you agree with my arguments (I'm aware that you don't), to suggest that they weren't presented is thoroughly inaccurate.

So the suggestion that you haven't read any arguments against the AFS simply isn't true. Your memory is, indeed, either failing you or is incredibly selective. Not only have you seen such arguments, you've engaged such arguments. So yes, Earl, after such considerable efforts by myself and others, the suggestion that you aren't being addressed is, indeed, offensive.

I've noted in the past what I see as the futility of pursuing either of these passages. I think the reading of them is contingent on what we conclude from other passages, so either side using them as positive evidence is engaging in circularity.

You know I've put them forward, just as I know you've never addressed them .

Let's start throwing that rock I mentioned above, and see how many birds we drop. We'll look at 1) Whether or not I've presented arguments in response to your AFS, 2) Whether or not Paul's thrust is "irrelevant" and, as bonus 3) How strong one of your few positive arguments from the Paulines (the use of revelatory language to describe Paul's "gospel") is.

The second of your "Top 20 Silences" is Rom.16.25-27. Here you plainly describe Paul's gospel as his "information about the Christ," which he received as revelation from God or from scripture. Why, you wonder, does Paul receive his "information about the Christ" from such sources? The plain reading you suggest (pointing, amusingly, to Eph.3.5 as a case in point) is that the "mystery" is Christ himself.

Except that if you'd read Eph.3.6 instead of proof-texting 3.5, you'd know that that's not what Paul's mystery is. You'd know that that's not even the "plain reading." You'd know that Paul's mystery concerns salvation, and thus comes from the only source it can come from--from scripture and from God. This isn't surprising, this isn't a silence, this is Paul saying exactly what we should expect Paul to say, unless you know another source Paul should derive such things from. In any event, it sure shouldn't be the other apostles, who, we see at length in Paul's works, disagreed with him.

To show how much people hinge on this misunderstanding, no less a mythicist than Richard Carrier has used Eph.3.5 to support his reading of the nature of the revelation of the "Lord's Supper," despite the fact that, outside the proof-texting, the two have nothing to do with each other.

Now, I'm not looking for a response to this here (though I am still looking for a response. . .maybe another thread). Getting a response isn't the aim at this juncture. Rather it's simply to show that 1) Your argument from silence is addressed, directly or indirectly, with great frequency, and 2) Paul's thrust is substantially more relevant than you seem to think.

[snip]

Here you have fundamentallly misunderstood my point. Firstly, I invite you to show me where, in any post I've made in this thread, I've assembled any argument for an historical Jesus. Show me where it is "contained in my words." Show me where I have suggested that your position is subjective, but mine is not. Show me, for that matter, where I've condemned such subjectivity. My point has always been that such subjectivity should be acknowledged, and not presented as objective fact.

Failing you showing all that, I would be grateful if you would acknowledge your mistake so that the many here who will devour your post, while glossing mine, will be aware that I'm not being fairly presented in it.

You think you're swinging a double-edged sword, but it only strikes if you swing it at a strawman. I have argued at length, against historicist and mythicist alike, that all assessments of the argument from silence (and, ultimately, most arguments for or against historicity) are subjective assessments. That is the point I am addressing, and which you keep evading. I keep emphasizing that it is a criticism that pertains equally to all parties, and you keep trying to polarize it. That does nothing but cloud that actual argument.

I am not condemning reading things "into" Paul. It's inevitable, as you have just implicitly acknowledged. We simply don't have enough information and thus, by necessity, need to come up with scenarios that fit the information we do have. But how well it fits, or how well it stems from the evidence, is not quantifiable. The evidence can exist objectively. The interpretation of that evidence cannot. And, like all interpretations, it is largely the product of the preconceptions of the author.

We do not "base our conclusions" on non-existent evidence, but our conclusions themselves are, as I've said above, speculative scenarios. They have to be, because it is all we have.

Bingo. This, right here, is the point. I'll give you an analogy that might help clarify a little. I can present all sorts of objective facts about the relative benefits of socialism and capitalism. Books could (and have) been written on the matter. But the choice of which economic system is best is ultimately a subjective assessment. People can and do disagree, even passionately, but it ultimately comes down to the whim of the economist. Likewise here, it ultimately comes down to the whim of the exegete.

I'm not interested in whether you've argued the point, at the moment, I'm well aware that you have. I'm not interested in any argument other than the underlying principle of your argument from silence. You say we should expect to hear a sound, but you have no quantifiable way to say that. I repeat the point ad nauseum because of how many times you have missed it.

If you make the claim that not a single poster on this board who agrees with the mythicist position is not at least partly motivated by a crusading loathing of Christianity, I don't believe it. I keep you out of that group, and don't mention them when I'm posting in response to you, particularly as an unqualified closer to my post, which might lend the impression that such a group counts you in their number. I'll be grateful for the same courtesy in return.

You've misunderstood the Shakespeare analogy, but you're beginning to see it above (albeit almost parenthetically), so I've snipped it for now.

Kevin, apologies again, my response to Earl took longer than expected. I haven't forgotten you

Regards,
Rick Sumner

gurugeorge

Well yes, but the thing is that most standard biblical scholarship looks at Paul with the preconception that he's talking about the historical Jesus of the gospels; Doherty is looking at Paul without that preconception.

IOW, standard biblical scholarship is usually the learned, po-faced adjustment of some tiny gadget on the shakey periphery of a vast Heath Robinson contraption grounded in the assumption that Paul (and other acknowledged earliest texts like Hebrews) is talking about the same, historical Jesus as the gospels and the later proto-orthodox folks talk about.

In fact, when you get right down to it, right down to the nitty gritty, the vast, intricate machine is ultimately grounded on the tiniest and shakiest of anchors: the preconception that the entity that "appeared" to Cephas and the Pillars, etc., is an entity they had previously known as a human being.

Remove that assumption and the whole flimsy flapdoodle falls like a pile of Jenga bricks.

dog-on

or just remove the part about Cephas and the Pillars...