Steven Carr

ERCLATI
First, please note that all this discussion came about because I said (from memory) something like the historicity of the life of Jesus was supported by a small amount of archaeology.

CARR
Well, it isn't.

No more than the historicity of the life of Sidney Barton is supported by people finding a real city called Paris.

ERCLATI
So when archaeologists find John quite accurate about a number of locations....

CARR
He is still bluffing, which isn't going to work on us,as we know this stuff.

Where was Arimathea? Where was Ephraim?

gurugeorge

On what basis do you believe this? Apparently, on the basis of some texts ... which look no different from other texts about people with supernatural abilities, who, for some strange reason, you don't feel compelled to worship.

At any rate, you seem to be letting slip here that your standard is not, after all, rational. I mean, I could just about understand a rational person mistaking the historical-seeming bits and pieces in the Jesus story as necessarily being proof of the existence of some ordinary human being.

But to then circularly derive support for the supernatural elements in the story from the merely historical-seeming aspects in the story - well, that's a marvel to behold!

I don't think they're necessarily consciously biased, I don't posit a conspiracy at all. They're just mistaken. As I said, the main thing is that it simply hasn't occurred to most people because either a) as people external to Christianity, they take it for granted that the (mostly Christian) investigators have done their job properly, or b) as believers, or people invested in the continuation of the tradition, there is a huge cognitive dissonance in even skirting the thought that the whole thing might be a gigantic mistake - that one's life's work, thought, dedication, is essentially meaningless.

Hence the smoke-and-mirrors dismissals of mythicism. Check out Doherty's investigations of some of the high-handed pooh-poohing of the ahistoricist/mythicist idea ("Mythicism? Pah! Lunacy! The great Professor X has already dealt with that silly position!") here. For example, re. Grant, the secular historian you've mentioned:

neilgodfrey

But we know ancients did think it was a myth. Church Fathers wrote many paragraphs attempting to refute the idea that the Jesus story was a myth even though it sounded so terribly similar to pagan myths. See Justin Martyr's efforts: 69-70 of his Dialog with Trypho. Educated Romans such as Pliny and Tacitus thought it was a superstition. So when you say they "mostly" didn't think it a myth, I don't know what you can reliably infer from that. How do we determine it was a majority belief and at what point and how do we interpret the swinging numbers?

But the fact that it doesn't "read like a myth" to many today is, I suggest, the result of cultural conditioning. We have been taught to accept that it is "bible" or "gospel truth" from the moment we entered into the life of our Western societies. Bibles generally are even published with different bindings and paper quality to underscore this bit of cultural heritage.

So we are predisposed to read with a sense of reverence an account of Jesus ascending to heaven, but with a bit of scorn an account of Romulus disappearing in a cloud into heaven; or we read with some sense of cultural if not religious reverence an account of miraculous healing or raising from the dead or post-resurrection appearance or virgin birth, but with some sophisticated disdain the very same miracles told of Vespasian, Apollonius, Romulus, Asclepius, etc.

The names and book binding are wrong in the latter cases. They lack our familiar religious associations and the King James legacy.

Neil

Amaleq13

Can you explain how this is not an example of the logical fallacy of "Hasty Generalization"?

I believe this is the error your opponents think you are making with this claim and that appears to me to be an accurate assessment. One true statement doesn't make an entire story true just as one false statement doesn't make an entire story false. Each individual claim must be supported. Anything less is just intellectual laziness.

And scholars are essentially united in considering our version of John to be late and the result of more than one author, right?

Isn't "a number of locations" an exaggeration? I know that mention of the seven pools in Bethesda suggests an early source for at least some of John as we have it but I'm not aware of "a number" of such confirmed claims.

This information has changed my view of John but I consider yours to be a logically flawed exaggeration of the facts. IMV, the best we can say is that our version of John probably contains some relatively early material but, beyond specifically confirmed claim (eg 7 pools), we have no idea how much else should be considered early and we have good reason to suspect subsequent editing and revisions of any early material.

It indicates an early source for the final version we have but it is logically fallacious to try to extend assume an early source for any specific claim for which we have no actual evidence. One can argue that the reference to the 7 pools indicates an early source for that specific reference and, possibly, the narrative related to that reference but I don't see how one can logically go beyond that to the entire story. That simply isn't correct and the fact that your position seems to rely on this mistaken thinking is problematic.

Steven Carr

From Wikipedia 'The closest alternative match is to the five colonnades of the asclepieion itself; Origen, writing in the 3rd century, claims to have seen the five porticos, but since the site was by then Hadrian's construction, this must refer to the 2nd century version of the Asclepieion, requiring the authorship of the Gospel of John to be dated after 130.'

The Gospel of John must be early because it contains features only present after Hadrian constructed them :-)

bacht

I don't know if ercatli has addressed the phenomenon of "pseudepigraphy", books written anonymously and credited to someone famous. Daniel is one example from the Old Testament. The apocrypha have books ascribed to Ezra, Baruch and Jeremiah. These types of books usually include historical details supposedly from the time and place of the famous figure (eg. the stories about Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon in Daniel).

This procedure was well established by the 1st C. Matthew, John, Luke and Mark are similar, books written by someone else and ascribed to early figures in Christian history (in this case two disciples and two apostolic associates). In these cases the original writer didn't provide an autograph, or if they did it's lost.

The point is that these sorts of writings are not contemporary reports, they're theological documents striving for credibility and authority long after the events described.

GakuseiDon

No, there is no evidence that the ancients thought it was a myth, if you mean that the whole Jesus story didn't happen. There is not one line in any extant literature that suggests anything other than that they thought Jesus was on earth.

Then let's have a look. Here is from Chap 69 of his Dialog with Trypho:

"And having raised the dead, and causing them to live, by His deeds He compelled the men who lived at that time to recognise Him. But though they saw such works, they asserted it was magical art. For they dared to call Him a magician, and a deceiver of the people."

The Church Fathers wrote to a skeptical pagan audience to dispell the notion that Christianity was some strange new superstitution. To do this, they attempted to show how similar Christianity was to the pagan religions. The reason that the pagans didn't recognise this was because the devil was trying to copy prophecies about Christ from the Old Testament, but the devil screwed them up because he couldn't understand those prophecies. (I discuss this in an article on my website.

At the least we can infer that Tacitus didn't think that Christ existing was a myth. (The evidence from Pliny the Younger is less clear).

aa5874

Trypho in Justin Martyr's "Dialogue with Trypho" did think that Justin's description of the conception of Jesus was like that of the mythical Greek Gods.

Dialogue with Trypho 57 The birth of Jesus as described by Justin was a monstrous phenomenon or foolishness like the Greeks to Trypho.

Tacitus' Christus may have been a forgery, up to the 5th century, almost 300 years later, no Church writer used Tacitus's Annals 15.44 as evidence that there was a character called Jesus of Nazareth.

Why would Eusebius ignore supposedly genuine information about Jesus in Annals 15.44 and used forgeries in Josephus?

It would appear that CHRISTUS was not in the original Tacitus' Annals 15.44 or that Christus was not Jesus of Nazareth.

spin

On your own admission, that makes you more akin to him.


spin

neilgodfrey

A deft stroke to avoid the use of the word "myth" by pulling out "religions". No, Justin does not compare "religions" as such (state cultic and other) with the Christian "religion". He instructs his readers by drawing similarities, as you say, between pagan myths and the central Christian narrative.

Neil