Toto

It's just that you would like to sweep away a lot of arguments by labeling them "contrived" or some other undesireable quality, rather than providing actual arguments against them.

And since you seem to think that the gospels have a "ring of authenticity" while most other readers think that they have a ring of mythical storytelling, it would probably be best to avoid those instant condemnations.

Crucifixion seems to have been banned in the Roman Empire by Constantine, I think in part because Jesus was supposed to have been crucified (IIRC - don't have time to find a reference) but pictures of Jesus on the cross have to wait for several centuries after that.

I don't understand the question. Are you implying that Jesus was God incarnate?

In Mark's gospel, Jesus fails at a lot of things. He fails to get his message across. He fails to convince the Jews to convert. Then the women fail to inform anyone else that he rose from the dead. Joe Wallack will tell you more about that. But this is still story telling, not real history. Many stories have some sort of conflict that raises the dramatic tension.

And it is not clear that Jesus' healing of the eye problem was a failure. It took two steps to succede, which I think has some symbolic value. I may get back to this.

aa5874

But, when this so-called Jesus heals a blind man , with saliva and dirt, as written in gJohn 9.1-12, you regard that miracle as authentic and helps the HJer which is similar to the fundie position.

However, it is being the son of a holy ghost, transfigured, resurrected and ascended as established and claimed to be witnessed by the authors of the NT and the Church Fathers that Jesus is regarded as mythical.
HJ is an exercise of futility.

Antipope Innocent II

In this thread I'm saying I find them contrived while providing actual arguments against them. So please spare me the scoldings.

And spare me the strawmen. Where did I say the gospels as a whole have a "ring of authenticity"? I've never said any such thing and would never do so. I said those stories have details with such a ring IMO. As do some others. That's totally different to saying "the gospels" have a ring of authenticity.

If you're unclear on the difference I'll explain it to you, but I suspect you're quite clear on that and are just being rather petty. So please stop.

Not so. The earliest dateable, surviving depiction we have dates to about 400 AD. That's about 80-100 years, not "several centuries". And that's the earliest surviving Christian depiction. Then there's the earliest surviving non-Christian depiction: the graffito from the Palatine mocking a certain 'Alexaminos and showing him worshiping a crucified man with the head of a donkey. That dates to the Second Century.


How could I be implying that? Clearly I'm saying that his followers considered him so. So unless you can find Hellenic Jewish depictions of Yahweh at Dura Europos or anywhere else, the lack of depictions of Jesus in the first few centuries of Christianity doesn't support the MJ idea any more than it does the HJ one.

That the stories were retained because they served a wider theological or narrative purpose is not in dispute - the gospels are statements of faith after all, not works of history or journalistic reporting. That doesn't rule out the idea that they were in the mix to begin with because they happened.

And maybe it does have some symbolic value (see above). But the details are interesting. Not only does Jesus not succeed at first but he also doesn't just wave his hands and say "You are healed" (as he does in several other stories). He makes a paste of dust and saliva and wipes it on the man's eyes. This is a folk remedy for cataracts in the Middle East even today.

God Incarnate resorting to Galilean village folk cures - that's a strange detail for Christians to ponder. But it's also a odd detail in a story that supposedly began as some kind of Spiritual God-Man from the sub-Lunar sphere. It's funny how this non-existent guy keeps acting like a First Century Galilean preacher, even when that doesn't fit with the story very well.

Toto

So let's get this clear. You think that a few incidents that you claim have "a ring of authenticity" about them can be assumed to have derived from some sort of oral tradition, and are evidence in favor of a historical Jesus, in spite of the fact that you admit that the gospels as a whole do not have that ring of authenticity?

How is this not "contrived?" You have to assume that there was a historical Jesus, that oral stories about him circulated in some medium for about half a century (or maybe a century), and that while most of what was reported about him in the first gospels was legendary, still you can identify an authentic bit behind a few small details embedded in the gospel?

But of course we have no evidence of these oral stories. The supposed oral stories are merely meant to explain how the first gospel might have included authentic material about Jesus. But this assumes what you are trying to prove. On the contrary, Mark, the earliest gospel, gives every impression of being a literary creation.

Michael Turton (who posts here as Vorkosigan) analyzes this passage here and finds no indication of historicity. And I do not think that this is a strange detail for a creative writer to add to a story about Jesus, the presumed savior who comed down to earth, wanders around, has some adventures, is killed and rises again. Why is healing a bind man using Galilean folk cures somehow not such a likely detail - as opposed to getting into a boat on the Sea of Galilea, attending a wedding at Cana, drinking wine with friends, or making clay birds that can fly. When the savior comes down to earth and takes on earthly garb, he faces some of the same challenges that ordinary people do. Superman still needs to find a phone booth to change clothes.

I don't see this at all. The Jesus of the gospels is, you seem to admit, largely legendary. The authors of the legend describe a wandering Galilean preacher/ wisdon teacher / magician. The mythicists claim that there is no way to find a historical core in the legends - it's a story about a Galilean preacher, so he acts like a Galilean preacher. The HJ'ers claim that something can be extracted, somehow, from a tale of magical happenings, symbols from the Hebrew Scriptures, and other literary devices. But there is no HJ methodology for this extraction.

Antipope Innocent II

Yes, that pretty much sums up the vast majority of opinions in the entire fields of the study of the origins of Christianity over the last 200 years or so quite nicely. Some people don't share this general view though: fundamentalist Protestants, many conservative Catholics and MJers. Make of that what you will.

How can oral stories circulate about him "in some medium"? It's not like people were listening to them on CDs in their cars on the way to work. And I have no idea where you get "maybe a century" from. Leaving that aside, if I'm considering the hypothesis that Yeshua existed and looking at the evidence in relation to that idea then of course I'm "assuming" he existed. Just as when I'm considering how the evidence stacks up against the MJ idea I "assume" that idea for the purposes of the analysis as well. I just happen to consider that the evidence for the HJ idea stacks up better than the evidence for the MJ one, but how else can I consider the evidence for either if I don't "assume" the hypothesis under examination for the purposes of analysis?

Short of finding some of those CDs or the invention of time travel, we're unlikely to have direct evidence of it - that's one of the tricky things about oral material. The gospels and other writings refer to this oral tradition, of course. Some have claimed to have found remnant evidence of Aramaic oral-formulaic elements in the text of some NT passages, but I don't know enough about that to comment.

See above. Of course I assume that for the purposes of seeing how it stacks up against the evidence. Little details like the one in the John story strike me, in the course of that analysis, as supporting the idea of an earlier oral strata and an historical Yeshua. They don't strike you the same way? Then I guess that's why we disagree on this issue.

So you keep saying. And I see it as a literary work based on a mixture of oral tradition, midrash and legendary elements with a substratum of historical basis.

Michael Turton is tackling something else entirely there, which is only tangentally relevant to what I'm saying. He disagrees with the apologists that we can take this story entirely at face-value? Terrific, so do I.

And thus any detail of element which can be claimed to have that ring of authenticity can be counter-argued to be a detail included to make the fiction more realistic. Sure. And around and around we go ...

Steven Carr

It seems that AI does not like my tests for 'ring of authenticity'.

But he has totally forgotten to tell us what his tests are.

How can we tell that some miracle stories are based (however loosely) on real events and that no parables are?

Because there are no events in the parables which have any ring of authenticity?

Antipope Innocent II

I doubt many atheists would "like" tests that wrongly assume they are theists. We're funny that way.

No, I haven't. Read my last few posts again.

Er, no - because the parables are couched entirely differently in the narratives.

Toto

What I make of it is that you have a hard time arguing your point without throwing in some sort of insult. Why is that? And can you support your assertion that this reflects the vast majority of opinions – or that fundamentalist Protestants and conservative Catholics do not agree on the issue of an oral tradition?

The Jesus Seminar had its methods for trying to isolate the original words of Jesus, but I don't recall "ring of authenticity" as part of that, and I don't think that they extended their search to the miracle stories.

But that's it –the gospels do not refer to an oral source, or any source. They do not say things like "this story was told by the people of Bethsaida. . ." The Christian assumption has been that the gospels represent the stories and memories of the apostles. But is there any reason for an atheist to assume this?

That does make discussing the issue very subjective and hardly worth pursuing.

What he is tackling there is whether there is any basis for a historical substratum in the gospels. I don't know how you interpreted it or what you think he is tackling.

Does this not demonstrate that authentic details can never be used as proof of historicity?

Antipope Innocent II

That was pretty obviously a joke Toto (notice the emoticon?). Please lighten up.

That wasn't what I said. Most fundamentalist Protestants and conservative Catholics do agree with everyone else (except MJers) that there was an oral tradition between the historical Yeshua and the gospels. Where they disagree with almost everone else is in their belief that the gospels can be accepted as face value history rather than a mixture of historical elements and legendary ones. They say it's all historical. And you MJers say it's all legendary. Everyone else is in between.

I believe they were concentrating on the sayings, weren't they?

Sure they do: Luke 1:1-2, John 21:24-25.

See above.

"Very subjective" and "the study of ancient history" tend to be phrases that go hand in hand, given the paucity and nature of our sources on all sorts of things. If you think the origins of Christianity is bad, try studying the early Germanic tribes in the First and Second Centuries AD. Or any number of other topics. People who like to study unsubjective things should try physics or something.

Whether the miracle itself happened - ie a man blind from birth being cured by Jesus. A man with cataracts getting them removed by a wandering faith healer using an old folk remedy is something else entirely and rather less hard to imagine happening.

And I said they were "proof" of authenticity where, exactly?