Kapyong

Gday,

So, Papias met with "any one who had attended on the elders" - no specific connection to anyone who met Jesus at all. Just people who had met with unknown "elders".

And so Papias and those who had attended on these "elders" then talked about various people who were allegedly close to Jesus.

But no connection is made between Papias and anyone who met Jesus.

At best we have :
Jesus -> disciples -> elders -> those who attended the elders -> Papias


Irenaeus first made claims about Polycarp in late 2nd century.
Polycarp makes no mention of meeting John or any apostle.
No John or NT epistle mentions Polycarp.


K.

JoeWallack

JW:
Ah, progress. After 416 posts we can finally start to analyze your Methodology here. You have a link to a section of a Wikipedia article on Historical Method. Is your claimed Methodology:

1) The entire Wikipedia article on Historical Method

2) Only the section on Argument to the Best Explanation

3) Something close to 1) or 2)

4) Other

I feel like a celebrity panelist on What's My Line? It can not be 1) or 2) because (among other things) of:

There needs to be significant distance between competing conclusions.

Feel free to change your Methodology as the Thread evolves. I do it all the time.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

ApostateAbe

It is primarily all about "The Argument to the Best Explanation" and nothing else on that Wikipedia page, though I wouldn't claim that any other historical method is bad. They would just be secondary. My primary way of critical thinking and debate about anything including issues of Christian history is encapsulated in C. Behan McCallagh's methodology, including item #7.

GakuseiDon

I don't understand that logic, Kapyong. If I claim that you are a phantom, do you suddenly become non-historical? Aren't you confusing claims with actualities?

Yes, but we know why: the influence of gnostics and their abhorrence of the flesh. The earliest layers seem to present Jesus as a man 'according to the flesh'. The gnostics argued against Jesus having flesh, having been born through a woman, and having suffered (which requires flesh).

I'd be interested in how you tie all this together. How do the earliest layers portray Jesus? When did Christians start claiming that Jesus didn't come in the flesh?

I would recommend Kevin Rosero's excellent analysis of early Christian writings and how they fit (or don't fit) into Doherty's proposed model, called "Doherty's Christianities":
http://christiancadre.org/member_contrib/rosero1.html

Toto

I don't know anyone who agrees with you on this point, that there is always enough evidence to come to a reliable decision.

Nope.

The map is not the territory. The evidence that you have is not necessarily a reflection of objective reality - it may have missing elements or distortions. It may not have been sufficiently vetted for reliability.

It doesn't sound as if you have any familiarity with the problems of evidence in science or history. If the only area that you are familiar with is evolution, you might have a distorted idea of the consistency of evidence that social scientists deal with.

I think you are the one with the muddled definition.

ApostateAbe

OK, I guess I do need to be clear about my definition of "evidence," if you really think it is muddled. The Wikipedia page on Evidence seems to have a good working definition:

"Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion."

Though the phrasing may come off as loose, it is exactly the definition that I accept. The phrase "...that is used to determine..." is appropriate, and I would disagree with it if it were, "...that does determine...", which would make it more in line with the muddled definition that is common among us. That muddled definition would imply that a set of evidence stops being evidence when the associated assertion is no longer determined to be the truth. With my definition, evidence stays evidence as long as anyone uses it that way.

What is your definition of "evidence"?

Toto

Perhaps it would be clearer if the definition stated that evidence includes anything that can validly be used to determine the truth of an assertion.

For many Christians, the spiritual visitation that Christ made in their hearts is all the evidence that we need. For a secular historian, this is not evidence.

I contend that the gospels are a quality of evidence closer to this spiritual feeling - i.e., worthless, because there is no objective reality behind them.

JoeWallack

JW:
While I am trying to figure out how it is possible for AA to have a Methodology which consists of an excerpt from Historical method which consists only of evaluating your evidence but has exorcised how you determine evidence, I offer the following analogy to AA's claim that the baptism is likely historical:

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Mark_1

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Matthew_4

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Luke_4

"John" = " "

A familiar pattern. The original story ("Mark") has an embarrassing item. The spirit drives Jesus. "Matthew" was apparently embarrassed by it so he edits "led" for "driven". "Luke" softens further and "John" eliminates the problem at the source (again). Using the only two criteria which AA claims to be using but claims he is not using, The Criterion of Embarrassment and The Criterion of Multiple Attestation, wouldn't AA get the same result here as he gets for the baptism, that Jesus being driven by the spirit was likely historical? If not, why not?

I previously asked the same question regarding all the apparently embarrassing events in the Passion (like everything there that happened to Jesus). At the risk of possibly putting AA on the path to going Christian, if AA applies these two criteria the same way, shouldn't he believe that the entire Passion was likely historical?



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

ApostateAbe

I would be with you on your definition except for the inclusion of the word, "validly." If we include the word, "validly," then the debate will be in large part about whether or not the evidence actually counts as "evidence." Not only that, but the debate is also about whose set of ideas fits the "evidence" the best. Those two parts of the debate then blend in with each other inextricably. It is very difficult to tell the difference between a bad set of evidence and a bad set of ideas, or between a good set of evidence and a good set of ideas, using a definition of "evidence" that requires a subjective judgment of validity.

With my less-muddled definition of evidence, then everyone can agree what the "evidence" is. One member of the debate may focus on a set of evidence relevant to him or her, and the other member of the debate may focus on a different set of evidence, but all members can agree on exactly what the whole of the evidence is, and there is only one goal of the debate--determine which set of ideas can explain the evidence the best.

Wikipedia has an even better definition of evidence given on its page on scientific evidence.

"Evidence is information, such as facts, coupled with principles of inference (the act or process of deriving a conclusion), that make information relevant to the support or negation of a hypothesis."

The use of the phrase, "relevant," is key. Information is not evidence only when it is not relevant, and the definition of "evidence" does not rest on the final validity of the associated hypothesis.

jgoodguy

I'd describe them as little to no tangible reality outside of a historical setting. They are religious propaganda and like propaganda in general they need some reality in order to convince. Another comparison would be a historical novel, some history is needed to give the scene described some reality in the reader's mind.

"Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself.

As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare." the wiki.

So in some sense the gospels must have some facts that can be verified in order to convince the reader of the validity of facts that cannot be verified. To say they have no reality is overly broad, but whoever is analyzing must be aware of the pitfalls of accepting what appears to be the reporting of facts.