aa5874

Can you name any event, as described in the NT, with respect to Jesus the Christ, that you know is not true?

spamandham

I have not been arguing such a position at all. My position is that we can not expect to glean any relevant information about a historical Jesus from these accounts, and since these accounts appear to be the basis of everything recorded about him, we can not say anything at all about a historical Jesus.

This is why there are so many competing theories among reputable historians. If they actually knew anything about him, there would be justifiable consensus regarding more than just "he existed". How many people can you think of that historians generally agree existed, and yet can not agree on any details of that person's life? Surely this rare, if not absolutely unique to Jesus.

I have not changed positions, though I am certainly willing to if I find reason to do so. I think you may be confusing me with the author of the OP?

For the record, my current position (which hasn't changed in this thread) is:

- I do not see that anyone has made even a reasonably half baked case for any detail (beyond "he existed") about the personage of an HJ

- I certainly think the books of the NT are historically useful, contain much information to help us understand the culture they were written in, and contain many verifiable historical facts, as well as many verifiable unfacts (as would be expected in a work of fiction, but not as much in a work of rapid mythmaking)

- I think the most parsimonious explanation for the birth of Christianity is an actual work of intentional fiction, rather than myth making. Every aspect of Jesus is tied up in fantasy, and almost every detail recorded about him in Mark has OT counter parts (I accept that the NT is pretty much based of Mark/pre-Mark). If he had been a historical figure who was made legendary, we would expect the legandary aspects to be add-ons rather than central to his character. In the event he was in fact a historical character who became this wound up in legend (like Santa for example), then we can not reasonably expect to learn anything about him from such records. Not only that, but even in the case of Santa, the legend is only so grand because it was written in a fictional work! To me, it is completely unreasonable to say these are just myths and legends that happened to grow up around a HJ without any fictional intent. Of course, I'm just a layman.

- I see no evidence that Mark (/pre-Mark if you prefer) was intended as a biography. Mark provides no background information about Jesus (common in period biographies as best I can tell), but instead jumps right into the main plot at the baptism of Jesus, with reference to the basis of the story explicitly stated (the writings of Isaiah). How could the author possibly make his fictional intent more clear without saying "I made all this shit up based on my messiah yearings from Isaiah"?

- Based on my conclusion Mark is a fictional work, I also believe the earliest dating for Mark is circa 70 CE (about the mid point of the historical concensus anyway). It was inspired by the squashing of the Jews and destruction of the temple, to show that the Messiah had already come just a few years earlier, according to prophecy. The writings of Paul probably preceded Mark, else Paul would have made reference to Mark. Since Mark's Jesus is fictional, odds are increased that Paul's Jesus is mystical.

- I do see evidence of the other Gosples being intended as biographies. They introduce lineages, birth stories, stories about his youth, etc., that are absent in Mark. Paul may or may not have believed in a historical Jesus. I tend to think the case he did not is significantly stronger than the case that he did. My suspicion is that Jewish messiah myths caused the Jewish uprising. Paul was part of that.

- If Christianity were a dead religion, I think there would be no question at all among historians that Jesus was a fictional character, derived using the Logos process from bits and pieces of the OT (mostly Isaiah), using the Homeric tradition popular at the time, and that mythmaking sprouted afterwards.

J-D

Yes. I know he didn't see all the kingdoms of the world at once from the top of a high mountain. I know he didn't turn water into wine. I know he didn't simultaneously ride on two different animals. I know he wasn't born at two different times (once when Herod was king and once when Quirinius was governor).

J-D

I didn't say you were arguing for it. I said I was arguing against it. I was arguing against it because it was, as nearly as I could make out, the position being put forward by aa5874, and that is what I was doing before the first exchange between you and me on this thread. I stated that I was arguing against it in an attempt at clarification, and if you use that as an opportunity to clarify your position, that's a good thing.A conclusion that we cannot glean any reliable information about a historical Jesus from the Gospel accounts may or may not be correct. An argument which attempts to derive that conclusion from the premise that the Gospel accounts contain much wildly implausible information (and I got the impression that you were attempting such an argument) is not valid. If that isn't the argument on which you base your conclusion, I'm not clear about what the argument is.I don't know how many competing theories there are among 'reputable historians', nor what would you consider to be 'reputable'. But are they really in disagreement about everything?I didn't say that you had changed positions. I said that the position you seemed to be putting forward was different from the one I was arguing against, as outlined above. In effect, as I saw it, aa5874 seemed to be arguing A, I was explaining what I thought was wrong with the arguments for A, and you responded to me by arguing B. So I thought it was relevant to point out that, regardless of whether or not you were right about B, it wasn't a pertinent response to what I was saying because B is not the same as A.I wasn't trying to. I can't say that nobody on this thread was trying to, because we seem to have had a couple of believers join into the discussion, but you can see that I rejected their arguments.I have no argument about that, except the part in parentheses, which I don't understand the logic of.I find that assertion very intriguing, but you haven't yet given enough detail to convince me.I find that assertion very intriguing, but you haven't yet given enough detail to convince me.If you mean you're not a historian, neither am I.

Still, it seems methodologically reasonable to me not to exclude the possibility that the Christian Scriptures are partly but only partly the work of deliberate fabricators. Even if some aspects are deliberate fabrications, I don't think it necessarily follows that the whole is a deliberate fabrication.Again, I don't see that there are only two possibilities. I don't see that excluding the possibility that it was intended as a complete biographical account of Jesus's life leaves only the possibility that it's a complete fiction.If the author did say that, it would be clearer, wouldn't it?

But the author didn't say that, did he (or she)?I gather that conclusion is the consensus opinion of scholars, but the argument you give for it is incomplete at best. Paul doesn't refer to Mark; but Mark doesn't refer to Paul, either.I don't follow that logic, either.Paul was part of what? How? What makes you think so?

Setting aside Paul, it seems highly likely that Jewish apocalyptic beliefs played a part in causing the Jewish revolt of 66, just as they certainly played a part in causing the revolt of 132, whose leader was regarded by some as the expected Messiah. But what does that prove? That the Jews expected some sort of Messiah? We know that anyway. The revolt of 132 also demonstrates that the Jews were capable of believing that a real-life flesh-and-blood individual was the fulfilment of some sort of Messianic prophecy (as indeed they did again centuries later in the case of Shabbetai Tzvi, to name only the most famous other example), so how does that make it less likely that some of them had done that a century earlier?This is simply a reassertion of your own conviction, not an addition to the argument.

(Homeric tradition popular at the time? Among who? And what do you mean by 'the Logos process'?)

spamandham

It's up to those who claim they can extract such information to provide an argument that is compelling enough to hand wave away the magic. The baptism of Jesus involves a magic element central to the story. There are only a few stories in Mark where magical aspects are either not involved or are peripheral.

How could someone justify saying the magic part didn't happen, but the baptism did, when the the very purpose of the baptism is obviously for Jesus to make a grand magical entrance! "Well, he could have been baptized" is not the same as a reasoned argument that he probably was baptized. Why, when the story starts off with a common fictional literary device, appeals to such devices throughout, and ends with the main character floating off into the sunset, to we not assume 'fiction' as the genre rather than 'biography'?

It's rare for anyone promoting a HJ position to question the underlying HJ assumption. It's only because they start with the assumption that there was a HJ that they think it's reasonabe to try to detangle history from a muddled mess of patent fantasy.

It isn't merely that the Mark (I'm only going to refer to Mark since there is concensus the others are based of Mark/pre-Mark) contains wildly implausible information, which it certainly does, it's that Mark reads like a work of fiction, and the Main character is tightly coupled to fictional ideas. How is what you propose any different from trying to extract information about the historical Santa from 'The Night Before Christmas"? You have merely assumed the genre of Mark was originally biography. What is the justification for that assumption?

Yes, if you include the mythicists.

I don't disagree with this approach in general, but when so much of the story is tightly coupled to fantasy, and it reads like fiction, and the assumption it was originally intended as a biography is based on little or nothing at all, and every aspect of the main character is designed to show fulfillment of prophecy (including where he was born , the city he was raised in, a 1 year ministry, etc.), it's reasonable to question the genre.

There has been some work to determine whether or not the Gospels were intended as biography, and the conclusion is "yes", among historians based on what to me appears to be very weak arguments.

For example, Dr. Bart Ehrman, admits that the death of Jesus is seriously out of place for a period biography. Yet rather than question the HJ assumption, he invents a new biographical subcategory that applies only the the Gospels. This seems unreasonable to me.

aa5874

Now, I also know of other events that are not true as described in the NT.

I know that there are no prophecies of Jesus the Christ.
I know that Jesus the Christ could not be a product of a Holy Ghost and a human being.
I know that at least one of the genealogy of Jesus the Christ is not true.
I know that Jesus the Christ could not cause a fig tree to die by talking to the tree.

I know that human beings are not sick as a result of devils.
I know that Jesus could not have made people well by claiming to remove devils.
I know that Jesus the Christ could not have brought back a person to life, already dead for 4 days, by talking to the person.

I know that the body of Jesus the Christ has not been ever found after it was claimed to be buried in a sealed tomb while under guard.


You cannot tell me of anything that is true in the NT, with regards to Jesus the Christ, I also cannot tell of anything true.
You can tell me of events that not true, I can also tell of events, which I have outlined, that are not true.

So therefore, based on what I know, and what you and others claim to know, I have come to the conclusion that the historicity of Jesus the Christ is without basis. The NT lacks credibity.

J-D

I have stumbled across one detailed attempt to do so, and I would guess that if there is one there may be others. I lack the expertise to judge the attempt, but for what it's worth I have been unable to detect any flaws in the argument.

On the other hand, I think I can detect logical flaws in the arguments presented so far on this thread in favour of the conclusion that it is impossible to extract reliable information about a historical Jesus from the Gospel accounts.

If 'H' stands for the thesis that it is possible to extract reliable information about a historical Jesus from the Gospel accounts, then there are three possibilities:

H1: H has been proved [true].
H2: H has been proved false (disproved/refuted).
H3: The truth or falsehood of H is an open question.

I have not on this thread asserted H1. As I understood it, this thread began with an assertion of H2, but I think the arguments presented for it are flawed. So as far as I am concerned, that leaves the position as H3: an open question.

Now you say that if anybody asserts H1, it's up to them to prove it. I agree. If anybody comes forward asserting H1, I will want to examine their arguments. However, equally, when somebody comes forward asserting H2, I want to see their arguments. And so far they're not good enough to convince me.That may be obvious to you, but it's not obvious to me. What is obvious to me is the likely motivation for including the supernatural/mystical elements in the story. But that still leaves it an open question for me: it is possible that the whole baptism account was fabricated with the the supernatural/mystical elements as an integral feature from the start, but it's also possible that the supernatural/mystical elements were incorporated into a pre-existing naturalistic baptism account. Purificatory ritual immersion is an established Jewish practice and not historically implausible as far as I know.

I think it is also worth mentioning, to give a fuller picture of what we're dealing with, that it is not only the supernatural/mystical elements of the Gospel accounts which are not historically plausible. To mention just one example: verse 6 of Chapter 3 of Mark can't be historically true, even though there is nothing supernatural or mystical about it. Analysing the Scriptural accounts is not simply a matter of throwing away the 'magic'.

But consider this also: What reason would somebody have for fabricating that verse, in its current form, at the probabl time of compilation of Mark? I find it easier to conceive of it being an ideologically motivated distortion of an earlier tradition than a completely fresh invention.Granted. But once again there are three possibilities, not two, as follows:

1. There is good reason to think that the story that Jesus was baptised is true.
2. There is good reason to think that the story that Jesus was baptised is false.
3. It's an open question.

The point about baptism being historically credible is not that it establishes 1, but that it counts against 2, leaving the matter, so far as I am concerned, at 3.Which fictional literary devices are you talking about? What is the reason for thinking they were common in fiction at the presumed time of the compilation of the Christian Scriptures? And which fictional genre are you talking about? Nowadays, when people refer to 'fiction', the first thing most people think of is novels, but it seems to be generally considered that novels as we know them now did not exist at the time we're talking about.This may be true about a lot of people, but so what?In what ways does it read like a work of fiction? What kind of work of fiction? What other works of fiction from the same time period does it resemble?Because we can be much surer about how and why 'The Night Before Christmas' was created, and it is that information which excludes the possibility that it is useful as a source of information about the historical Saint Nicholas.No I haven't. I don't know what makes you think I have.But isn't that arguing in a circle?But except for the non-specific 'fiction', you haven't said what you think the genre is.I know nothing of this. But as a non-expert, it seems to me that even on the orthodox view, they can't be seen as biographies. I would have thought 'memoirs' would have been the closest they could possibly come.Again, I know nothing of this, and I understand why creating a category solely for the Gospels seems methodologically unattractive. But to avoid that option it's necessary to have a sufficiently well-defined alternative.

J-D

I don't see how this is any different from the argument you put forward previously. We are in agreement that some things in the New Testament are not true (and the list I gave was not intended to be exhaustive, any more than the list you offer now is exhaustive). I still don't think it's valid to deduce from that premise the conclusion that nothing in the New Testament is true.

spamandham

...and it's still missing!

For those of us who discount the resurrection as obvious bullshit, where is the body? Is it really reasonable that it could have been lost to time, when Jesus was supposedly this charismatic cult figure with several followers, and the cult has been continuous ever since? You mean, the followers just didn't care and didn't bother to visit the tomb? Why is his childhood home unknown as well, by the same reasoning. Why does he have no writings, or personal artifacts that anyone knew about in early writings.


Some possible resolutions to this:

- his body was burned at Gehhena as was common for traitors, and his delusional followers (a small group rather than the BS multitudes the gospels claim) invented the whole burial and resurrection story to explain away the missing body. The same thing happened to his family members and his disciples. That's why no-one knows where any of these bodies are. Plus, the Romans gathered up everything that people might consider a relic and bulldozed his home. now if the James ossuary proves authentic...well that would be interesting indeed!

- he had only a few followers, and the movement only became big long after they were dead. Several charlatans began hocking multiple grave sites, and since no-one could tell which one was real, they forgot about all of them. The same thing happened with his childhood home and the bodies of his relatives and his disciples and all his personal belongings that might be considered relics.

- there was no HJ, or if there is a historical prototype for Jesus, he lived much earlier and was not the charismatic cult figure crucified by Pilate as is generally agreed.

spamandham

When attempting to reconstruct ancient people/events from scant or credulous records, H3 is always the proper position. We are arguing what is more parsimonious, not what has been proved. The level of certainy we can hope to achieve will doubtfully ever rise to the level of "proved" or "disproved". So, it seems we both agree H3 is the right position out of these three options.

The fact that there might have been a HJ who might have lived in the first century and might have been a wandering preacher who might have been crucified by Pilate, is not more parsimonious than "we historians screwed up and put Mark in the wrong genre", given all the inconsitiencies the former position creates - one of which is mentioned in my previous post above regarding the abject dirth of any relics.

It is up to those promoting a HJ to explain why there is no body, no personal artifacts, no bodies of relatives, no bodies of close followers, no references to these in period writings, no pilgrimages to his birth home, no records of his lineage (the lineages in Matthew and Luke are obvious later redactions), no personal writings of Jesus, etc. There is no physical evidence at all that predates Mark, nor is there any reference to such evidence in any of the earliest Christian writings. This would be an unwarranted argument from ignorance, if not for the fact that the alternative HJ position results in an unbroken chain for the cult, which then makes the argument from ignorance compelling. For a cult that has existed continuously and continued to grow from it's foundation until the present, we expect to have records of these things, yet we don't.

There is such evidence for John the Baptist (see Shimon Gibson), even though John's cult died out long ago.

The HJ position is not in harmony with all the facts. As best I can tell, the Fictional Jesus position is. I'm not convinced the Mythical Jesus position stands up either, although it seems more plausible to me than HJ. A Mystical Jesus, the current up and comer, is in essence the same as the Fictional Jesus, differing only in the author's intent.