Doug Shaver

I was referring to the written documents, and I meant "wide circulation," relative to the Christianity community, in the same sense that Plato's dialogues were in wide circulation relative to the ancient world in general. Not that there were physical copies all over the place, but that people were aware that such documents did exist and had some knowledge about what was in them.

Doug Shaver

I'm going to assume that by "apparent intentions" you mean their actual intentions insofar as we can reasonably infer, from whatever pertinent evidence we have, what those actual intentions were. There is an important sense in which the apparent intentions of a con artist are to do you a favor.

Whoever wrote the gospels were Christians of the second century or possibly the late first, and any guess we make about their intentions has to take that into consideration. We are surely justified in supposing that whatever else they might have intended, they wrote those books in order to propagate the ideas propounded by the central character in their narratives. Once we get that clear in our minds, only then can we ask, Did they think that the central character was an actual person (and thus also intend to give their readers some incidental biographical information about him)? Well, what would have made them think so? Was this something taken for granted within the Christian communities to which they belonged? It looks to us ahistoricists as if the answer to that question is no. The extant documentary evidence for pre-gospel Christian thinking clearly suggests to us that Christians were not worshiping a deified man. They were worshiping a deity of some kind, but not one who had spent a few years traipsing around Galilee preaching sermons and healing people before suffering a martyrdom in Jerusalem.

I have read many works of fiction that "appear to be a form" of one or another kind of nonfiction: journalism, scholarly papers, diaries or other personal journals, biographies . . . you name it, some fiction writer has used it as a literary device.

Quickly, perhaps, but how early? The earliest unambiguous attestation to their existence comes from Irenaeus in the late second century. Justin seems to know about some documents that, if not the same ones, were rather like them, but he was writing only about 30 years before Irenaeus. So, maybe by the year 200, most Christians were under the impression that these books told the true story about the actual founder of their religion. That doesn't give us any reason to suspect that their impression was correct.

This has already been discussed at some length. If the Christians they were acquainted with were saying "This is our founder's story," they would have had no reason to suspect that the man never really existed. And, even supposing they had had some doubt, they would have gained no polemical advantage by voicing it.

What would have made their fictional nature obvious, had they been fiction? What did fiction writers of that time do that writers of nonfiction never did?

In my view, no, they were not so written.

I have not studied ancient literature qua literature. I am not familiar with the technical terminology. I know nothing of genre except as it applies to modern literature.

But, I am a writer, notwithstanding my present inability to make a living at it. (In the latter regard, I am particularly sympathetic with writers in the ancient world, almost none of whom could possibly have supported themselves by practicing their art.) There are certain things about being a writer that I know have been true about writers for as long as there have been writers. That knowledge informs my assessment of what the gospel authors could have been trying to accomplish. It is not something to which I can give any scientific interpretation, and so I cannot offer it as any kind of evidence for any conclusion. When I assure you that it is relevant to this debate, all I can say is, "Trust me." But I do so assure you.

Juststeve

Doug:

I contest your claim that all of the Biblical documents should be interpreted together. That’s the sort of thing that inerrantists do. It ignores the fact that the Christian testament is not one book but a collection of books written by different people at different places and at different times and evidently for different purposes. It is only people with a magical notion of how the Bible came into existence, inspired by the Holy Spirit and all that rot who would expect Paul to be saying the same thing as Matthew or would deny that they in fact contradict one another on the vital issue of how one is reconciled to God. Vital to them at least.

I understand how this approach is helpful to the cause of those who wish to deny the actual existence of a human Jesus. Its too easy to point out obvious falsehoods and fictions in the Bible and then contend that the fiction render all of the related documents unreliable. Some bad apples spoiling all the fruit so to speak. This is simplistic and not how we evaluate other sources of information. Fox News for example is filled with rot but that doesn’t mean that everything they report is false. If they report that Obama went to Cape Cod on vacation I tend to accept that as true. If they say Osama Bin Laden was with him, that I want to check out.

Each assertion made in the New Testament documents needs to be separately evaluated.

Steve

Doug Shaver

That depends. Let's pick an example, say, Alexander the Great. Let someone claim that the original story about his conquest of the Middle East was a work of fiction. We'll ask, "Why should we believe that?" We can compare the response we'd get with what we get from people who deny Jesus' historicity.

You're quite right that the claim "It could have been fiction" doesn't by itself prove a thing. But that observation, as an argument for Jesus' historicity, is a pure straw man. Nobody, but nobody, is saying, "The gospels could have been fiction, therefore Jesus never existed."

However, if the historicists' primary argument for his existence is that the gospels could not have been fiction, then they have assumed the burden of proof.

Doug Shaver

In that regard, inerrantists have a valid point. Their mistake is in how they apply it.

Juststeve

Doug:

The comment I made which you responded to was a virtual quote of what Toto said in post 263. There it was the Gospel of Mark could be just fiction so ignore it.

Steve

Juststeve

Doug:

Tell me why I sould evaluate one author in light of what another author says just because they're in the same anthology.

Steve

yin_sage

Steve, I don't think you mean to deny that light can be shed from one document onto another. Obviously, anything we learn from a 1st or 2nd century document can tell us things about the character of other documents of the same period.

And Doug, I don't think you mean to suggest that the bible should be read as a single harmonious unit.

Sorry for the intrusion, guys.

Please continue.

gurugeorge

Did I say "educated"?

But there are two senses of "real history" possible here:

1. in the Euhemerist sense - i.e. myths weren't about superhero-like beings with magical powers - those entities didn't exist historically, but rather ordinary people existed historically, but their stories got blown out of all proportion and larded over with fantastic elements.

2. in the sense that the superhero-like beings were actually historical, actually did have magic powers, etc., etc.

I don't actually know how many educated people thought myths were euhemeristic. My guess is that the ideas were mixed, but if anything the allegorical interpretation was the majority view. For example, the neo-Platonists (presumably following Plato) seemed to hold to an allegorical interpretation.

But with an allegorical interpretation there are two further options:- were they allegories because they were fictional and just made up as allegories, or were they allegories because the lives of these superhero-like characters, their adventures, had simply lent themselves to allegory.

Looking at educated Christians, I was looking at Origen contra Celsus the other day, and it struck me how much of a literal superhero-like belief he has about Jesus. The curious thing is, he's arguing about elements of the myth that we moderns might want to naturalise and point to as evidence of a preacher or whatever, but he himself holds a superhero-like view - the quotidian elements like preaching just happen to be quotidian elements in an overall fantastic story.

spamandham

Do we really think Ovid believed that Romulus was historical? Yet there is no distinction between how he recorded a character he surely knew was mythical and how he recorded Pythagoras, a character he surely viewed as real.

Ovid on Romulus:

Tatius died, and you, Romulus, gave orders equally to both peoples. Mars, removing his helmet, addressed the father of gods and men in these words: ‘The time has come, lord, to grant the reward (that you promised to me and your deserving grandson), since the Roman state is strong, on firm foundations, and does not depend on a single champion: free his spirit, and raising him from earth set him in the heavens. You once said to me, in person, at a council of the gods (since I am mindful of the gracious words I noted in my retentive mind), ‘There will be one who you will raise to azure heaven.’ Let your words be ratified in full!’

Omnipotent Jupiter nodded, and, veiling the sky with dark clouds, he terrified men on earth with thunder and lightning. Mars knew this as a sign that ratified the promised ascension, and leaning on his spear, he vaulted, fearlessly, into his chariot, the horses straining at the blood-wet pole, and cracked the loud whip. Dropping headlong through the air, he landed on the summit of the wooded Palatine. There he caught up Romulus, son of Ilia, as he was dealing royal justice to his people. The king’s mortal body dissolved in the clear atmosphere, like the lead bullet, that often melts in mid-air, hurled by the broad thong of a catapult.

Ovid on Pythagoras:

There was a man here, Pythagoras, a Samian by birth, who had fled Samos and its rulers, and, hating their tyranny, was living in voluntary exile. Though the gods were far away, he visited their region of the sky, in his mind, and what nature denied to human vision he enjoyed with his inner eye. When he had considered every subject, through concentrated thought, he communicated it widely in public, teaching the silent crowds, who listened in wonder to his words, concerning the origin of the vast universe, and of the causes of things; and what the physical world is; what the gods are; where the snows arise; what the origin of lightning is; whether Jupiter, or the storm-winds, thunder from colliding clouds; what shakes the earth; by what laws the stars move; and whatever else is hidden; and he was the first to denounce the serving of animal flesh at table; the first voice, wise but not believed in, to say, for example, in words like these :

‘Human beings, stop desecrating your bodies with impious foodstuffs. There are crops; there are apples weighing down the branches; and ripening grapes on the vines; there are flavoursome herbs; and those that can be rendered mild and gentle over the flames; and you do not lack flowing milk; or honey fragrant from the flowering thyme. The earth, prodigal of its wealth, supplies you with gentle sustenance, and offers you food without killing or shedding blood.

Among educated Greeks, none seem to have believed the demigods were real, yet we have biographies of many nonetheless. I think you are making too little of the symbolic stories. They are not just sprinkled in, they are the core.