Freethought & Rationalism Archive

bacht · 10-14-2010, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juststeve

...a man that did everything Jesus is represented as having done in the Greek Testament actually existed...

This would be the Catholic, Orthodox and conservative Protestant position.

The liberal Christian position would be that some Jewish man lived in the early 1st C who became the core of the gospel account, with considerable embellishment. Modern literary treatments like The Last Temptation of Christ and The Da Vinci Code start from this point.

The skeptic position would be that the story as written is unbelievable, and that to date we have no corroborating evidence for the existence of any of the NT characters. Therefore the probability tends to seeing Jesus as a fictional person, and the official history of the pre-Constantine church as imperfect at best.

The conspiracy theorist would see the gospel story as a tool of social and political control, using the promise of salvation/threat of damnation as a lever to manipulate behaviour.

The idealist would see the gospel story as an advance in human development, a unique collection of insights and teachings.

A psychologist might judge the gospel story as a product of its times, a new salvation cult for world-weary Romans, using the contemporary languages of supernaturalism and Hellenistic culture.

Zaphod · 10-14-2010, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zaphod

I have remarked often here that I am impressed by the lack of understanding of the erudite scholars here who don't seem to understand this point, nor the significance of the problem of silence on the HJ which has direct bearing on the failed hypothesis of the HJ.

The so-called argument from silence is evidence against the HJ. The fact that nothing reliable has been found in the histories, testaments, and archaeology of the time and place of the HJ is powerful evidence that he did not exist. Now, one may accede to the wettest dreams of Christian apologists and dismiss this ear-shattering silence on the grounds that he was a nobody.

But that is of little or no help to the HJ hypothesis, for it does nothing to address the first of two central issues - that currently, there is NO reliable evidence for the HJ. ( 1 - It also undermines, in a a very significant way, the veracity of the Gospels as having even a tenuous relationship to objective truth, because if the HJ was a nobody, then many of the core foundational events of the NT are utterly corrupt. And if they are corrupt... 2) It also makes no sense because we have records of Roman statesman of the time dismissing the veracity of the HJ whilst bemoaning the decidedly newsworthy scale of the Christian movement.)

The second issue central to the rejection of the HJ hypothesis is that there is no need for an actual historical Jesus to exist to explain the rise of Christianity. Here we have the evidence of uncanny parallels of the Christ story with former myths, as well as the MJ hypothesis that offers plenty of evidence that JC was not earthly, did not have a historical core, but was indeed originally divine.

We now have all we need to reject the HJ hypothesis, and that is why the default position must be - if we are going to treat the HJ hypothesis with the same type of rigor with which we treat other scientific hypotheses - that Jesus Christ did not exist.

To advance a proper hypothesis, you need evidence upon which the hypothesis is supported. For the hypothesis of the HJ, we have no real evidence for, and quite a bit against.

A proper hypothesis needs to be epistemically necessary. But the HJ is not epistemically necessary, the MJ will do just fine.

The HJ hypothesis has no reliable evidence to support it, and no reason which demands its existence. It fails, and by default so fails the idea that JC actually existed.

An additional question would be whether a HJ actually improves or degrades the incoherence of the story of Christianity. If it makes it even more incoherent, it would virtually prove the nonexistence of the HJ.

You can't replace dogma with dogma and what you've said here seems to me just as dogmatic as any religionist you try to respond to.

Talking about proper hypotheses might be fine in theory, but what is at stake here is a relatively clear issue: did Jesus exist? You like anybody else can wave hands and claim one way or another. The issue can only be decided on evidence. My understanding of the available evidence is that no-one can show sufficient evidence to demonstrate the existence of Jesus. That should end the discussion and one should quit while they're ahead. However, there is a cultural fallacy that we need to say more (which I guess in this case is in reaction to the long establishment of christian hegemony). But that's where a lot of people get into trouble. The naive use of the argument from silence is a classic example. It only works when you can demonstrate that the silence is unexpected in the relevant conditions. Nobody goes the extra yard to show that it is--they merely claim it, as you do here. (Spot check: how many Roman historians can you cite who were writing in the 30s and 40s of the first century?? There is a gaping hole until the 2nd c.) We are yet again left with the fact that "the lack of evidence is not evidence of lack".
spin

Wrong. Lack of evidence is absolutely, unequivocally, ineluctably evidence of lack! I don't know why you, and others, keep using this maxim, but I doubt it was ever uttered as such. Lack of evidence is not proof of lack, but it sure as hell is evidence of lack.

There were plenty of historians writing around that time and around that place. Do you mean to say that if a new document is unearthed showing that, say, Philo spoke of Jesus Christ and his apostles it should be deemed questionable because he would not be expected to have noticed him? Is it really that preposterous that since other street preachers named Jesus were mentioned that JC would not be expected to have a single mention? Personally, I think that idea is ridiculous, and Christian apologists have gotten away with murder, pulling the wool over the eyes of the skeptical community with that one.

Finally, is not Vespasian on Jesus evidence of absence?

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

We have inherited a tradition that people take to represent a past reality. It is in itself not a hypothesis. The historical Jesus as we have the term today is a post hoc hypothesis to try to give modern order to the inherited cultural artefact. It's just another cultural artefact. Shooting at it doesn't really deal with the underlying issue: did Jesus exist? There is nothing strange about the simple question. We have traditions about Jesus that portray him as having lived in this world, suggesting he existed. However, traditions are not evidence of history in that one cannot test the veracity of the content of the tradition. That does not mean one can simply dismiss the tradition as though none of it has any veracity, even though it may be the case. However, the scholarly position doesn't need to deal with it substantively, for as I said the onus is always on the substantive case. If one goes over the line and claims that something does not exist, that is in itself a substantive case, which needs evidence. No amount of handwaving will allow one to dismiss the position they have put themselves in by claiming too much.

Jesus has not been shown to exist and no amount of assumptions that he did will change his status. At the same time Jesus has not been shown not to exist and subterfuge won't change that. But it is not necessary to posit this non-existence of Jesus: one can't say anything meaningful about history until the matters can be shown to have historicity.

spin

God has not been shown to exist. There is no evidence for God, and he is not needed to explain phenomena today. His hypothesis fails. That is why atheists are right to say that unless he shows himself, the correct default position is that he does not exist.

With (the Abrahamic) God, we can go a step further, because that God is incoherent, self-contradictory. Therefore, we can say that he is actually disproven , at least by the lights of scientific naturalism. I don't think we can go that far for the HJ, but I feel we MUST acknowledge that the HJ hypothesis fails, and that the proper position is that it must be assumed that he did not exist, pending further evidence.

Again, if the HJ is also more incoherent than the MJ, I feel that is about enough to disprove him, at least from a scientific perspective which is:

If a hypothesis has no evidence to support it, has no epistemic necessity to demand it, and is self-contradictory it is proven false.

If a hypothesis has no evidence to support it, and has no epistemic necessity to demand it, it is failed.

In the case of the HJ, we have a hypothesis which has no evidence to support it, has no epistemic necessity to demand it, and actually has evidence against it. It has failed.

If we had guts we would stick to our guns on this, IMO.

spin · 10-14-2010, 01:02 PM

On to talking about hypotheses once again, when we were talking about something much simpler (ie did Jesus exist):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zaphod

If a hypothesis has no evidence to support it, has no epistemic necessity to demand it, and is self-contradictory it is proven false.

If a hypothesis has no evidence to support it, and has no epistemic necessity to demand it, it is failed.

In the case of the HJ, we have a hypothesis which has no evidence to support it, has no epistemic necessity to demand it, and actually has evidence against it. It has failed.

To use the maximalist approach, the gospels are evidence. Deal with them.

There is so much about the world that one simply doesn't know. Your approach is to say that they didn't exist. In a few hundred years you will be one of the myriad of people whose existence will be unsupported. Someone like you can then come along to say that you didn't exist because there is a lack of evidence for you.

spin

stephan huller · 10-14-2010, 02:08 PM

I have always been struck how there are two parties basically that have a tug of war over the question of the historical existence of Jesus. The one group says that because there isn't a lot of reliable evidence about Jesus he can be dismissed as a mythological figure. The other says that because the Catholic New Testament says that he was this and that we should simply accept that he was this and that. I don't think either opinion is very appealing.

Celsus mentions two basic opinions already very prevelant among Christians c. 177 CE - Jesus the one of a kind angel (i.e. a type of hypostasis never before seen on earth) and Jesus the child born to Mary. I associate the former position with the Marcionites (and the various 'heresies' related to them) and the latter position to the 'great Church' (and various subsects related to them). Is that enough to settle the issue? No but it's a start.

If we go back a generation earlier the hypomnemata associated with Hegesippus/Josephus seems to have inferred that Jesus's descendants were the heads of the Jerusalem Church down through to 147 CE when the original text was written. Do I believe this story about James the brother of Jesus et al sitting as bishops of Jerusalem? No, not at all. It seems to me to have developed to prove that the author's opinions were 'apostolic.' Nevertheless it is important to note that the idea that Jesus was a historical person with a historical family which came from Joseph is datable to a little over a century after the Passion (or seventy seven years from the destruction of the Temple).

If the hypomnemata is the first text to reference these ideas it is still pretty close to the 'end zone.'

Now how can we reasonably float the idea that the author of the hypomnemata 'invented' the whole idea of a historical Jesus? He couldn't have been the author of the original gospel but he could have developed a gospel text of his own. The only way I can see that argument work is if we somehow intimate that the choice of dates for the work (i.e. the seventy seventh year from the destruction of the temple) reflected something of a new appeal to convert Jews to Christianity.

In other words, 'Hegesippus' (cf. I think Irenaeus intimates that the real author of the hypomnemata was Polycarp and that Eusebius confirms this) gathered around him Jewish converts to Christianity with the idea that Jesus was the messiah and James was his brother and the destruction of the temple was caused by the mistreatment of the latter by the Jews. If his hypomnemata - our earliest reference to the idea of the historical Jesus - is in fact the first reference to the historical Jesus in history, then its POV was intimately Jewish. It represents a Jewish revision of an original Alexandrian form of Christianity which was closer - if not identical - with Marcionitism.

This would explain contemporary hostility from those identified as 'Marcionites' to the Catholic message as 'Judaizing.' They might have rightly regarded the whole system of the Catholics as a Jewish conspiracy in Christianity. As such the often reported 'anti-Semitic' tendencies of the Marcionites might have been distorted. They might not have been reacting against the Jews per se but a specific 'heresy' within the Christian family which was in fact ACTUALLY corrupting the original Christian message (or at least 'the original Christian message' according to the Marcionites).

If the hypomnemata created the historical Jesus out of the rib of Marcionites Isu then the opponents of the 'great Church' were crying foul about the injection of a specifically Jewish POV to the religion. This Jewish POV wasn't limited to 'Judaizing additions to the gospel' and 'Judaizing additions to the letters of the Apostolikon but also the hypomnemata's claims about a Jerusalem episcopal line (which undoubtedly was wholly fictitious), its likely interest in developing Josephus as a witness to the truth of the Catholic message (i.e. why the temple was destroyed, why Judaism had to end etc) AND most importantly that Jesus was a historical 'Jew' with family who went on to preserve 'Judaism' in a new form that was more favorable to God than the old system of sacrifices.

In other words, the hypomnemata preserved a variant myth about the preservation of Judaism, a contemporary historical counterpart to the rabbinic myth of Javneh (Jamnia) which is even more fictitious than anything contained in the New Testament.

All that I can see is that this book was composed a little over a decade after the Bar Kochba revolt. Hadrian and then Antoninus already issued decrees related to the 'restoration' of Judaism (i.e the ban on circumcision/castration). But the central question for me has always been - how do Jews living in the aftermath of Bar Kochba 'go back' to anything? If the Judaism of the 'blackhole period' (70 - 137 CE) - a period for which we know little if anything about the shape of Christianity, Judaism or Samaritanism - led to the Akiba's authentication of bar Kochba as the awaited messiah of Israel it is obvious that this halakhah would be problematic for Rome. You can't just let Judaism 'start up' again doing whatever it did to lead to war anymore than the Judaism of the Second Commonwealth - the religious system which effectively produced the first revolt - could be allow to continue especially when the temple was destroyed.

Judaism didn't restore sacrifices after the first revolt WHEN IT COULD HAVE AT LEAST THEORETICALLY. Nor were sacrifices restored after the Bar Kochba revolt because of Hadrian's ban on Jews ever setting foot anywhere near Jerusalem. But what was filling the void in either case? This is the million dollar question and it has profound effect on the question of the historical Jesus.

For there is no doubt that the historical Jesus is a Jewish Jesus. This is always front and center. The Marcionites who did not believe that Jesus was a historical person must have regarded the introduction of a tradition which not only said Jesus was a person but an observant Jew with absolute horror.

As such, it is difficult for me not to suspect at least that the historical Jesus was likely CONFIRMED if not invented (at least from the Marcionite perspective) with the publication of the hypomnemata. The author and the tradition he was associated with MUST HAVE been rooted in a appeal to Jews after the Bar Kochba revolt to convert to the divinely ordained covenant of Israel. The pages of the hypomnenata must have confirmed this understanding through the person of Josephus and his witness about the excesses of 'traditional Judaism.' At least that is what I suspect happened.

mountainman · 10-14-2010, 02:25 PM

That Jesus existed is not a simple fact, but an hypothesis which appears unsupported by a critical and skeptical review of all the available evidence. Certain people find it difficult to differentiate facts and hypotheses.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

On to talking about hypotheses once again, when we were talking about something much simpler (ie did Jesus exist):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zaphod

If a hypothesis has no evidence to support it, has no epistemic necessity to demand it, and is self-contradictory it is proven false.

If a hypothesis has no evidence to support it, and has no epistemic necessity to demand it, it is failed.

In the case of the HJ, we have a hypothesis which has no evidence to support it, has no epistemic necessity to demand it, and actually has evidence against it. It has failed.

To use the maximalist approach, the gospels are evidence. Deal with them.

Emperor Julian appears to have dealt with them as evidence of fiction and fraud:

"The fabrication of the christians is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.
Though it has in it nothing divine, by making full use
of that part of the soul which loves fable and is childish and foolish,
it has induced men to believe that the monstrous tale is truth."

A large group of regulars here refuse to discuss the place of the "Historia Augusta" amidst the evidence on the table of 4th century manuscripts, which include the earliest Greek bibles and the first and original "Church History". For anyone really interested in "Christian Origins", a background appraisal of the "Historia Augusta" is essential.

Juststeve · 10-14-2010, 02:28 PM

Stephen Huller:

When do you think the Gospel of Mark was substantially complete?

Steve

stephan huller · 10-14-2010, 02:47 PM

Quote:

When do you think the Gospel of Mark was substantially complete?

What do I know? I mean there are smarter people in the room than me. As someone who takes the Mar Saba document seriously I take an interest in your reference to the idea of the text being 'completed.' The Letter to Theodore seems to imply that the process was ongoing. Believe it or not I tend to think this is the most honest appraisal of the period. 'The gospel' never stopped being written and whether or not it was attributed to any one particular author people continued to 'complete' the mission of apostolic figures before them. I mean just think of Polycarp saying in his Martyrium that he was literally DYING (i.e. martyring himself) to complete John's legacy. Then there is the author of the Acts of Paul who confessed that he wrote this inspid book 'out of a love for Paul.' I don't know how to answer your question because I don't think the question can be answered truthfully.

If you accept Irenaeus's Gospel of Mark as the 'true gospel of Mark' then he says that it was completed at Rome some time before the beginning of the Jewish War. The way I read the Mar Saba document this Petrine text was identified as something different - not 'the Gospel according to Mark' but a hypomnemata written for Peter. I really don't know othe than to say that if Clement is to believed the gospel that was completed in Alexandria was Mark's true text.

Juststeve · 10-14-2010, 03:29 PM

Stephen:

How would it effect your thinking if Mark is dated to circa 70 C.E? I think many if not most university affiliated scholars would endorse such a date.

Steve

stephan huller · 10-14-2010, 07:17 PM

I agree. I actually prefer a date a few years before 70 CE. I can't believe that the gospel would have taken the world by storm if it was based on faux prophesy. There has to be something which led people to believe there was something special here.

Kids like McDonalds because of the toy in the Happy Meal. It's not magic. There is an explanation. So too with Christianity and the gospel. There was something 'causing' the loyalty to the new religion. It couldn't have been accomplished by force. The first believers were sincere believers in the faith - whatever it was originally.

I know - I am naive - but I don't believe that everything is a lie. So the rest of you can shoot me.

spamandham · 10-14-2010, 09:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

I agree. I actually prefer a date a few years before 70 CE. I can't believe that the gospel would have taken the world by storm if it was based on faux prophesy. There has to be something which led people to believe there was something special here.

This to me seems pretty specious. Mark 13 too closely resembles the events of 130-140 CE to be coincidence. I think you could argue that parts of Mark might be earlier, but not Mark 13's mini apocalypse.

The dating of 70 CE isn't based on anything of substance anyway, so I really don't know why it should be given serious consideration. I don't see any reason that parts of Mark could not be 170 BCE just as easily, or the whole thing as late as the end of the 2nd century.

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10-14-2010, 02:08 PM	#154
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	I have always been struck how there are two parties basically that have a tug of war over the question of the historical existence of Jesus. The one group says that because there isn't a lot of reliable evidence about Jesus he can be dismissed as a mythological figure. The other says that because the Catholic New Testament says that he was this and that we should simply accept that he was this and that. I don't think either opinion is very appealing. Celsus mentions two basic opinions already very prevelant among Christians c. 177 CE - Jesus the one of a kind angel (i.e. a type of hypostasis never before seen on earth) and Jesus the child born to Mary. I associate the former position with the Marcionites (and the various 'heresies' related to them) and the latter position to the 'great Church' (and various subsects related to them). Is that enough to settle the issue? No but it's a start. If we go back a generation earlier the hypomnemata associated with Hegesippus/Josephus seems to have inferred that Jesus's descendants were the heads of the Jerusalem Church down through to 147 CE when the original text was written. Do I believe this story about James the brother of Jesus et al sitting as bishops of Jerusalem? No, not at all. It seems to me to have developed to prove that the author's opinions were 'apostolic.' Nevertheless it is important to note that the idea that Jesus was a historical person with a historical family which came from Joseph is datable to a little over a century after the Passion (or seventy seven years from the destruction of the Temple). If the hypomnemata is the first text to reference these ideas it is still pretty close to the 'end zone.' Now how can we reasonably float the idea that the author of the hypomnemata 'invented' the whole idea of a historical Jesus? He couldn't have been the author of the original gospel but he could have developed a gospel text of his own. The only way I can see that argument work is if we somehow intimate that the choice of dates for the work (i.e. the seventy seventh year from the destruction of the temple) reflected something of a new appeal to convert Jews to Christianity. In other words, 'Hegesippus' (cf. I think Irenaeus intimates that the real author of the hypomnemata was Polycarp and that Eusebius confirms this) gathered around him Jewish converts to Christianity with the idea that Jesus was the messiah and James was his brother and the destruction of the temple was caused by the mistreatment of the latter by the Jews. If his hypomnemata - our earliest reference to the idea of the historical Jesus - is in fact the first reference to the historical Jesus in history, then its POV was intimately Jewish. It represents a Jewish revision of an original Alexandrian form of Christianity which was closer - if not identical - with Marcionitism. This would explain contemporary hostility from those identified as 'Marcionites' to the Catholic message as 'Judaizing.' They might have rightly regarded the whole system of the Catholics as a Jewish conspiracy in Christianity. As such the often reported 'anti-Semitic' tendencies of the Marcionites might have been distorted. They might not have been reacting against the Jews per se but a specific 'heresy' within the Christian family which was in fact ACTUALLY corrupting the original Christian message (or at least 'the original Christian message' according to the Marcionites). If the hypomnemata created the historical Jesus out of the rib of Marcionites Isu then the opponents of the 'great Church' were crying foul about the injection of a specifically Jewish POV to the religion. This Jewish POV wasn't limited to 'Judaizing additions to the gospel' and 'Judaizing additions to the letters of the Apostolikon but also the hypomnemata's claims about a Jerusalem episcopal line (which undoubtedly was wholly fictitious), its likely interest in developing Josephus as a witness to the truth of the Catholic message (i.e. why the temple was destroyed, why Judaism had to end etc) AND most importantly that Jesus was a historical 'Jew' with family who went on to preserve 'Judaism' in a new form that was more favorable to God than the old system of sacrifices. In other words, the hypomnemata preserved a variant myth about the preservation of Judaism, a contemporary historical counterpart to the rabbinic myth of Javneh (Jamnia) which is even more fictitious than anything contained in the New Testament. All that I can see is that this book was composed a little over a decade after the Bar Kochba revolt. Hadrian and then Antoninus already issued decrees related to the 'restoration' of Judaism (i.e the ban on circumcision/castration). But the central question for me has always been - how do Jews living in the aftermath of Bar Kochba 'go back' to anything? If the Judaism of the 'blackhole period' (70 - 137 CE) - a period for which we know little if anything about the shape of Christianity, Judaism or Samaritanism - led to the Akiba's authentication of bar Kochba as the awaited messiah of Israel it is obvious that this halakhah would be problematic for Rome. You can't just let Judaism 'start up' again doing whatever it did to lead to war anymore than the Judaism of the Second Commonwealth - the religious system which effectively produced the first revolt - could be allow to continue especially when the temple was destroyed. Judaism didn't restore sacrifices after the first revolt WHEN IT COULD HAVE AT LEAST THEORETICALLY. Nor were sacrifices restored after the Bar Kochba revolt because of Hadrian's ban on Jews ever setting foot anywhere near Jerusalem. But what was filling the void in either case? This is the million dollar question and it has profound effect on the question of the historical Jesus. For there is no doubt that the historical Jesus is a Jewish Jesus. This is always front and center. The Marcionites who did not believe that Jesus was a historical person must have regarded the introduction of a tradition which not only said Jesus was a person but an observant Jew with absolute horror. As such, it is difficult for me not to suspect at least that the historical Jesus was likely CONFIRMED if not invented (at least from the Marcionite perspective) with the publication of the hypomnemata. The author and the tradition he was associated with MUST HAVE been rooted in a appeal to Jews after the Bar Kochba revolt to convert to the divinely ordained covenant of Israel. The pages of the hypomnenata must have confirmed this understanding through the person of Josephus and his witness about the excesses of 'traditional Judaism.' At least that is what I suspect happened.

10-14-2010, 02:28 PM	#156
Juststeve Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Dallas Texas Posts: 758	Stephen Huller: When do you think the Gospel of Mark was substantially complete? Steve

10-14-2010, 03:29 PM	#158
Juststeve Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Dallas Texas Posts: 758	Stephen: How would it effect your thinking if Mark is dated to circa 70 C.E? I think many if not most university affiliated scholars would endorse such a date. Steve

10-14-2010, 07:17 PM	#159
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	I agree. I actually prefer a date a few years before 70 CE. I can't believe that the gospel would have taken the world by storm if it was based on faux prophesy. There has to be something which led people to believe there was something special here. Kids like McDonalds because of the toy in the Happy Meal. It's not magic. There is an explanation. So too with Christianity and the gospel. There was something 'causing' the loyalty to the new religion. It couldn't have been accomplished by force. The first believers were sincere believers in the faith - whatever it was originally. I know - I am naive - but I don't believe that everything is a lie. So the rest of you can shoot me.

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