blastula

Juststeve futilely relies on the huge assumption that the average person was able to even know competently whether Jesus was real or not. Even for those who lived during the relevant time, apart from anybody who would have met him or heard credible reports about him, there's very little likelihood most would have sufficient information to know one way or the other, and it diminishes progressively for later generations. The Jerusalem Nightly News wasn't airing back then, I don't believe.

hjalti

Hmmm....Abe, isn't the story about the guards at the tomb and the bribe about stories believed by outsiders?

But we can always imagine "better" scenarios: e.g. John became a disciple of Jesus!

The point is that as it is, the story is perfect as a propaganda to use against baptists.


And Abe, you might think for these reasons that scenario 3 is more plrobable than scenarios 1 and 2, but do you actually think that the reasons you give are so strong that it's absurd to think that 1 or 2 are more probable?

ApostateAbe

Sure. The problem, I think, is that an ad hoc explanation is better if it uses a patterns of history, not with exceptions of history. When one explanation fits the pattern, and another explanation fits the exceptions, then one explanation wins.
To say it is "perfect" would be exaggerating it. When we can think of formulations of the same account without an extra element that is out of place and could be construed as embarrassing (and, remember, we know for sure that Matthew, Luke and John really did find the baptism event embarrassing), then we need an explanation for that specific item in the account. It is not enough to say, "The whole of the accounts are a propaganda advantage for the Christians, and therefore that explains why they say John baptizes Jesus." It does not explain why John baptizes Jesus, because the baptism is not needed in order to make the rhetorical advantage work.
I give credence to #1, not #2. I think #1 is at least better than usual in terms of explanations. Unfortunately, ad hoc claims (new and unexpected) count for big negatives in historical arguments. I wouldn't go as far as to say that they are absurd, but they seem to be on the losing team.

GakuseiDon

We have people who knew people (etc) who knew Christ, like Papias and Irenaeus.

Papias wrote:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/papias.html

If, then, any one who had attended on the elders came, I asked minutely after their sayings,--what Andrew or Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the Lord's disciples: which things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I imagined that what was to be got from books was not so profitable to me as what came from the living and abiding voice.

Irenaeus wrote:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...eus-book3.html

Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom

And also:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...fragments.html

For, while I was yet a boy, I saw thee in Lower Asia with Polycarp, distinguishing thyself in the royal court, and endeavouring to gain his approbation... how he would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord; and how he would call their words to remembrance. Whatsoever things he had heard from them respecting the Lord, both with regard to His miracles and His teaching, Polycarp having thus received [information] from the eye-witnesses of the Word of life, would recount them all in harmony with the Scriptures.

Doug Shaver

How do you know that? Are you offering an argument from silence?

aa5874

Well, Marcion probably knew people who KNEW the PHANTOM. How would Marcion know the PHANTOM came to Capernaum directly from heaven in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius if no-one knew the PHANTOM?

"Against Marcion" 4 We know that Papias and Irenaeus were FICTION writers as soon as they claimed that they knew people who KNEW the CHILD of a Ghost.

Examine what the very Irenaeus wrote about Jesus the Child of a Ghost.

"Against Heresies" 3.16.2 Please FREE our minds from YOUR GHOST stories.

I don't want to hear anymore of your MYTH fables about an "historical Ghost" called Jesus Christ.

JoeWallack

JW:
I've identified AA's Methodology for concluding that the baptism is likely historical and discredited it. No attempt by AA to defend his methodology or even acknowledge he has one. I've also identified my methodology to conclude the baptism is not likely historical. No attempt by AA to discredit it. Therefore, AA's conclusion that the baptism was likely historical has been discredited in this Thread.

For AA's delicate sensibilities Doherty has no formal methodology either so he has not proven anything. But that is no defense against AA being refuted here.

It's not needed right now anyway but looking closer at the Criterion of Embarrassment (CoE), in evaluating historicity you look at Source Criticism first. Here, "Mark", we do not know the source. The next step is Literary Criticism. CoE considers whether a statement would have been embarrassing to the source. Since we do not know the source here we do not know if the baptism would have embarrassing to the source. Claiming an embarrassing baptism here is a Literary Criticism, based on the text, the baptism is embarrassing. Citing CoE as evidence here is a misapplication of the criterion since you are taking a Literary Criticism and trying to make it a Source Criticism. That's naughty as spin would say.

The argument for historicity of the baptism (h-bs) is than reduced to trying to use a supposed Literary Criticism embarrassment. This is evidence for historicity but it is secondary to a Source Criticism observation. The important question though is how much weight is this for h-bs. For those who need points sharply explained, just because the baptism would be embarrassing for a Christian, this does not prove h-bs and is not even necessarily good evidence for it. You also have to consider possible non-historical reasons for its usage.

General
Here we have an unknown author who has no problem presenting mainly the Impossible and Improbable and has a primary theme of discrediting supposed historical witness. So this author's threshold for presenting possible claims that he either knew were not historical or mistakenly thought they were, is relatively small. Put the other Way, this author did not feel much responsibility to give information against his wishes because others thought it historical.

Specific
The more astute Skeptics may have noticed that Paul and "Mark" have a primary theology that Jesus was humiliated/shamed/embarrassed and this comprises the second part of "Mark's" Gospel. Since Jesus' embarrassment is not just a theme of "Mark" but the theme of "Mark" we have a literary reason for the baptism. As an analogy you can go to every Assertian of the Passion and try to argue that it is likely historical because of CoE:

1 - Jesus was betrayed

2 - Jesus was near silent during his trial

3 - Everyone turned against Jesus before Pilate

4 - His followers all abandoned him

5 - Even though Jesus was really resurrected, none of his former followers believed it

Yes AA, I could do the same thing to Doherty and than some, but why should I. In the larger world, outside of these unholy boards, there are primarily bad arguments for HJ and Doherty is providing a valuable public service by arguing the rarely heard other side. God bless him. In the big picture, most people are Christian here and have no idea that the evidence for HJ is exponentially worse than they think.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

jgoodguy

May I suggest that the HJ evidence is not only weaker than most folks imagine, but is worst that most folks can imagine.

ApostateAbe

You mean it can't possibly be any worse? I think I can imagine evidence that is far less fitting for HJ than we have at this point. Suppose that we have evidence of ancient myth that really is what Acharya S and Freke and Gandy claim. Suppose we have ancient evidence that shows other mythical characters getting baptized, having 12 disciples, getting crucified, killed and raised again. Suppose we had evidence of an ancient religion before the first century CE that was a lot like Christianity. Suppose we have evidence that Peter, James, John, John the Baptist and Pontius Pilate were only myths. Suppose we had a heretical sect within 1st or 2nd century Christianity that believed that Jesus never existed on Earth. Suppose we had critics of Christianity who thought Jesus never existed. Suppose Jesus was not portrayed in the myth as a doomsday cult leader.

Wouldn't that make for much a much stronger explanation that Jesus was never a human being?

The HJ explanation would be weak if there was an alternative explanation that is greater, in my opinion. I maintain that the evidence is never "weak." Nor can the evidence be "strong." Only the explanations can be strong or weak. The evidence in relation to a particular theory can be fitting, unfitting, relevant, or irrelevant, but not strong or weak.

ApostateAbe

N/A
Joseph, there is a heckuva lot of material that you laid out for me here, and I have delayed responding to it, and I apologize. Allow me to correct a mistake: I have repeatedly stated my preferred historiographical methodology, as I did in part of the quote that you apparently skipped when you focused on another part of my same post in the beginning. I said:
If you follow that link, you will see the methodology laid out in full.

I take it to be a methodology with greater scope and more rigor than the methodologies that are also very common in critical New Testament scholarship. This methodology is not just appropriate for New Testament scholarship, but it is appropriate for determining greatest relative probability of any explanations about anything in any empirical field of study.

The more specialized methodologies of New Testament scholarship, such as the Criterion of Embarrassment, or the Criterion of Multiple Attestation, or the Criterion of Earlier is Better--they are good, but of course they have limits, and those limits show up most relevantly in debate. Someone may propose that the baptism accounts are embarrassing, but what if someone else claims that the accounts are not really embarrassing but are instead a necessary plot device for a fictional narrative? That is where the Criterion of Embarrassment or any other criteria specific to New Testament history simply isn’t enough. To strike down unlikely hypotheses, we would need such criteria as plausibility and less ad hoc, two of the five relevant items in Argument to the Best Explanation, to help show that the textual evidence that seems to show embarrassment to many critical readers really is embarrassment. Does the evidence more plausibly show a literary contrivance, or does the evidence more plausibly show a genuine embarrassment?

We don’t even need the Criterion of Embarrassment if we simply frame the problem like so: what is the most probable explanation for the details of these accounts? Embarrassment can be an important element for making the best sense of the writing, but it doesn’t need to be a criterion of its own.

For example, is it more probable or less probable that the author of the gospel of Matthew corrected for embarrassment as shown in the evidence of Matthew 3:13-14?

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’

Is it more probable or less probable that the author of the gospel of John corrected for embarrassment as shown in the evidence of John 1:30-33, with a seemingly very focused omission of the baptism event?

This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”

Using the criterion of plausibility, the most plausible way to make sense of this evidence seems to be that the gospel authors were genuinely embarrassed. We have still more evidence to that effect in the gospels (see the OP), and it plausibly fits the historical reality reflected in the evidence from Josephus (that there was a cult of John the Baptist in the same time and place as the Christians).

That’s all I feel like writing about for now. Your posts really do seem to demand a lot from the brain.