gurugeorge

Thanks for taking the time to really answer my questions Ben, I appreciate it - very clear post. I'd just say in response to the point above, my only qualm is really that the texts in question, the NT corpus, are not like newspaper clippings for the vigilante, or like Josephus, where the consensus is that there was some attempt to put things down objectively. For cult texts like the NT, you can't necessarily make that assumption - they're inherently less trustworthy, it seems to me - or to be more precise, with newspaper clippings, you know beforehand that while there might be some exaggeration or forgery or hoaxing, it's less likely, whereas with cult texts it's all up in the air, the tendency for theological axe grinding is so strong in such texts. Which seems to me to mean that you have to rely more strongly on the harder kind of evidence if available - and of course notoriously, there's little hard external corroboration for a man behind the myth.

But I guess as a historian you feel confident that you have ways of teasing out genuine historical facts from a mythical text even if you have no external corroboration and you don't know for sure whether or not any attempt was being made to be objective?

Ben C Smith

Thanks.

I do not think Josephus was very objective. But I do think there is history to be gleaned from his writings.

Even if the NT is less trustworthy than Josephus (a point which would have to be argued, not assumed), less trustworthy is not the same as untrustworthy, and evaluations can still be made.

First, I am not an historian except in an interested (and hopefully somewhat informed) amateur sense. I have taken the trouble to formally learn a couple of the relevant ancient languages, but I am not a professional historian.

Second, as for corroboration, how do you define external corroboration? External to what? Earlier you spoke of independent corroboration. Are these the same thing, in your view?

Third, how are you defining mythical text?

I am not trying to drown the discussion in definitions. I just need to know what you mean, since I can imagine the term mythical text, for example, being applied both to the Iliad and to the biography of Augustus by Suetonius, depending on how much myth it takes to make the text itself mythical.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

You are either not serious or seriously misinformed. The poets make much of Augustus Caesar being (A) of the line (progenies) of Aeneas, (B) the prophesied ruler over Latium (in Italy), and (C) the founder of a new race of men by his very birth (nascenti). His humanity is an essential element of his myth.

Besides, if being a god on earth is what you are looking for as a reason to reject the historicity of a fellow, did you not shoot yourself in the foot by admitting that the Pharoahs were (considered) gods on earth? In erasing the godhood of a Pharoah, do you not erase his manhood as well, on your own terms?

Ben.

aa5874

Augustus is recorded in the writings of Josephus, Tactitus, Suetonius, whereas Jesus is not recorded in any of these writings except for forgeries in Josephus.

Also, in the NT, the so-called mother of Jesus, the primary person who could tell the truth about the conception, claimed, as written in Luke, that she had no sexual contact with any man.

The direct words of the mother of Jesus, MARY, are written in Luke.

There is no claim recorded that the mother of Augustus did not have sexual contact with a man.

Augustus was human but deified.

Jesus was always the offspring of a Holy Ghost that ascended through the clouds on his way to heaven.

Augustus was recorded as dying on a specific date and was buried, unlike Jesus whose body disappeared and then was seen later with the disciples after which he ascended through the clouds.

This is Suetonius writing about the death of Augustus in "The life of Augustus"
This is the unknown author called Mark writing about the body of Jesus in Mark 16.6 Jesus was a myth from beginning to end.

Amaleq13

Because it is the most common and obvious possibility.

gurugeorge

Most common and obvious how? Are you saying that whenever historians have looked into mythological entities, 9 times out of 10 (or whatever), they've found that there was some man behind that myth?

Fair enough, but how much is that an artefact of "looking for the lost keys where the streetlamp is"?

Would you really want to say that it's obvious that the vast majority of deities listed here, for instance, are mythologised people?

I'd say it's far more likely that the majority come from visionary experience (i.e. they are entities met in a type of waking experience that's like dreaming while awake), and only a minority have any real people at the root of them.

gurugeorge

OK- had me fooled though!

In this context, I mean something not written by Christians. I realise there can be some triangulation by comparing different theological variants (they might let something slip in their polemic against each other).

I mean something like a text that's about a god-like or superhero-like entity. An entity that rationalism (which, along with some acceptance of some degree of materialism, is the foundation of historical study) cannot allow to exist. At a philosophical level, one might say "causality-violating entities".

Joshua Messiah as depicted in the NT canon is a causality-violating entity, therefore he cannot exist. But the fact that the NT canon is about a causality-violating entity seems (to me) to cast the whole thing in doubt, or a kind of "bracketing" - it means the text could be fiction, religious fantasy, a con-job, etc., etc., or some combination of these, either in whole or in part, as well as possibly containing some factual bits and pieces. But the doubt cast on the whole seems to me to make it difficult to place the locus of where to look for the factual bits. Are the factual bits just accidental or are they logically tied to the causality-violating entity in question? How do you even start to make a clear decision here?

One thing is for sure: the amount of what look like historical facts in this myth seems to be unique in world myths. People have believed that there's some evidential "weight" to this, but I think that's wrong - it could just as easily be an artefact of peculiar theological necessity, or a necessity to make a better con-job, or whatever.

Clivedurdle

May I again strongly recommend Michael Woods Myths and Heroes (or via: amazon.co.uk)?

Ben C Smith

This triangulation is exactly the sort of thing I am referring to when I speak of evaluating the texts, though it is not alone in the repertoire.

OTOH, I think we can extract certain bits of history even from texts that are pure propaganda.

And, in the case of Jesus, we do have non-Christian testimony in Josephus and Tacitus. These texts must be evaluated, of course, for genuineness as well as for relevance. But we are not starting with a null set for what you are calling external testimony. There is spadework to be done.

The biographies of Augustus and Apollonius cast their heroes in these impossible terms, too. But, then again, so does the biography of Romulus.

Difficult? You bet. It can be a mind-bogglingly complex process. Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, From Reliable Sources (or via: amazon.co.uk), page 77:

Although it is a simple process to think up hypotheses, it is no simple task to formulate hypotheses that actually link the observed pieces of evidence—that can explain the facts available, not those that the scholar might wish to have. Often, it takes many tries before the scholar can formulate a hypothesis that really works—one that satisfactorily accounts for the known evidence. There is no formula for success in this difficult venture.

Ibidem, page 78:

The difficulties of applying the so-called scientific method to historical research means that historians must often satisfy themselves with rules of logic that appear less watertight, making statements that seem probable, not "proved" in any "scientific" sense.

By creatively formulating tests that will work even if the author is not cooperative. But of course it is a priori possible that no such tests will work, and that the figure under examination cannot be touched. It is also possible that firm data (firm in an historical sense, not a scientific sense) may emerge. It all depends on the nature of the evidence left to us, and there is no way to tell in advance which kinds of data may be found. How do we even start? We start with the sources, naturally, but we have to at some point devise (often creative) tests of the data that will yield results.

Let me clarify this last point. There are plenty of cases, I think, where we can probably tell just from the nature of the sources left to us alone that there is not going to be much of anything we can do. Take Moses, for example. Did he exist? Our sources are so, so late, all of them, compared to his putative flourit, that I doubt anything approaching certainty can be had for even the bare fact of his existence, let alone his words or deeds. We are not in this boat with Jesus. Our sources are not that much later than his flourit.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Yes, as you guessed, legendary accretions are commonly encountered. Humans just can't seem to just tell the story like it was. We gotta spice it up.

Not just historians. Everybody who works with humans relating stories encounters this phenomenon. If you pay attention, you'll find it happening at your next family reunion.

I would think that would only be comparable if it was known that many keys had been lost under streetlamps.

No, but we aren't dealing with stories about a god. We have stories about a man with divine powers. That some eventually came to believe he was a god in human form is more unique but only addresses part of the evidence.

I'd say you are starting at the wrong end of the evidence.