Steven Carr

Sadly, you forgot to give any of these number of reasons why a persecutor of the churches in Judea would not be known by the churches in Judea.

Layman

Well, from what I have noticed about you, glib responses with no citations whatsoever are the norm. If you want to have a serious discuss about any particular point then all you have to do is be serious.

Clutch

Peter, thanks for your response. Correct, regarding the point about avoidance.
This suggests a pretty strong standard of success to impose upon debates over what current evidence indicates about events millenia past. No argument, none whatever, about the most reasonable view of ancient events ever aspires to more than probabilistic status. (Which is what I have quite explicitly and repeatedly stated about my own musings on the argument from silence.) Insofar as any premises are "known to be true", they will be cautious and overtly balance-of-evidence in their content.

I thought I had offered points relevant to these premises already, a couple of times now.

At any rate, while your argument is a lucid and very helpful way of identifying the issues, we ought to read each premise as probabilistic, and the point of the argument as probability-lowering with respect to a historical Jesus or just the prima facie reliability of Pauline writing. The premise least amenable to repair in this way is (4), which saddles the Silence argument with an unhealthily strong claim. A more reasonable claim would be something like:

(4*) If Paul investigated the site of, and route to, the crucifixion, and found evidence bearing out Jesus' death there, he would have had powerful didactic/proselytization reasons for writing widely about this, and those writings would have had special evidential, spiritual and/or didactic significance for those who received them and for the community within which they were circulated and preserved. Therefore,

(4**) If Paul investigated the site of, and route to, the crucifixion, and found evidence bearing out Jesus' death there, it is quite probable that writings to this effect would have been widely known and preserved.

Notice that in the context of (5), this generates a probabilistic disjunctive conclusion: It's quite probable either that Paul did not investigate the site of, and route to, the crucifixion, or that he did not find evidence supporting Jesus' death there.

Indeed, the whole silence argument is destined to produce disjunctive conclusions, rather than the sort you postulate. The upshot will be something like,

Either there was no Jesus;

or Paul is deliberately leaving out his failure to turn up any hard evidence or facts about Jesus' death;

or Paul did not want to look into it anyhow;

or Paul was forcibly prevented from carrying out any such investigation/visit;

or his writings about this were lost.

The rational force of the argument, if any, will stem from reflection on which of these are Just So Stories and which stand to reason. I've given reasons to think that that the third and the fifth are implausible. I have not seen much or any positive argument for the third, fourth or fifth options, except to say that they are possible explanations of the silence and hence defeaters of any claim that the silence establishes with certainty either the first or second option. This is correct; it does not establish them with certainty. It raises their probability, I think, with the remaining question being -- by how much? That's what I'd like to see discussed.

Peter Kirby

Hi Clutch,

Clutch writes: This suggests a pretty strong standard of success to impose upon debates over what current evidence indicates about events millenia past. No argument, none whatever, about the most reasonable view of ancient events ever aspires to more than probabilistic status. (Which is what I have quite explicitly and repeatedly stated about my own musings on the argument from silence.) Insofar as any premises are "known to be true", they will be cautious and overtly balance-of-evidence in their content.

I did not rule out the idea that knowledge on the matter will be probabilistic; I think that empirical knowledge generally is probabilistic. But there should be some kind of reasoning process or evidence behind each of the premises in the argument, which was my suggestion. The probabilistic value of that evidence can be stated in modest terms, but there needs to be evidence for the argument to have any success.

Clutch writes: I thought I had offered points relevant to these premises already, a couple of times now.

I left open the possibility that you might not even regard the premises as true once they are pointed out explicitly. I know from my own experience that I have abandoned arguments once I have expressed them in a syllogism. Even if not abandoned, the reasoning behind the premises might be refined once the premises are enunciated clearly.

For example, a point that was offered before included the idea that there would have been those "who recall the earthquake and the darkness when he died." In my expression of the argument, I did not make any mention of the earthquake or darkness, which would be additional and separate from the crucifixion bit. I expected that you might wish to state that you are in fact arguing against crucifixion-plus-earthquake-plus-darkness and not just crucifixion, or to state that this consideration does not logically form part of an argument against the idea of mere crucifixion.

Thus, though there may be and likely are points expressed before that bear upon the premises as they have been stated, I thought I would avoid the possibility of a straw man by addressing arguments that have been connected to the premises as I have expressed them - or as you have or will expressed them. Of course, you can cut and paste arguments made before if you still think that they apply to the argument in its current form, but I am not going to assume that you believe any specific points provide evidence for these premises until you say so.

Clutch writes: At any rate, while your argument is a lucid and very helpful way of identifying the issues, we ought to read each premise as probabilistic, and the point of the argument as probability-lowering with respect to a historical Jesus

OK. How much do you think that this argument lowers the probability of a historical Jesus crucified by Pilate outside Jerusalem in the first century? Roughly speaking, of course.

Clutch writes: or just the prima facie reliability of Pauline writing.

Please explain. I understand the individual words ok but I am not sure what is intended when they have been put together as above.

Clutch writes:

The premise least amenable to repair in this way is (4), which saddles the Silence argument with an unhealthily strong claim. A more reasonable claim would be something like:

(4*) If Paul investigated the site of, and route to, the crucifixion, and found evidence bearing out Jesus' death there, he would have had powerful didactic/proselytization reasons for writing widely about this, and those writings would have had special evidential, spiritual and/or didactic significance for those who received them and for the community within which they were circulated and preserved. Therefore,

(4**) If Paul investigated the site of, and route to, the crucifixion, and found evidence bearing out Jesus' death there, it is quite probable that writings to this effect would have been widely known and preserved.

These premises would be much stronger by far if there were reason for thinking that people known to Paul were disputing the reality of the crucifixion of Jesus. Is there evidence for such a dispute at the time of Paul's writing? If not, why should these premises be regarded as probable?

Clutch writes:

Indeed, the whole silence argument is destined to produce disjunctive conclusions, rather than the sort you postulate. The upshot will be something like,

Either there was no Jesus;

or Paul is deliberately leaving out his failure to turn up any hard evidence or facts about Jesus' death;

or Paul did not want to look into it anyhow;

or Paul was forcibly prevented from carrying out any such investigation/visit;

or his writings about this were lost.

The rational force of the argument, if any, will stem from reflection on which of these are Just So Stories and which stand to reason. I've given reasons to think that that the third and the fifth are implausible. I have not seen much or any positive argument for the third, fourth or fifth options, except to say that they are possible explanations of the silence and hence defeaters of any claim that the silence establishes with certainty either the first or second option. This is correct; it does not establish them with certainty. It raises their probability, I think, with the remaining question being -- by how much? That's what I'd like to see discussed.

Of course, a simple statement of a disjunctive conclusion is not something with which anyone can find fault. The simplest example is, "Either there was a historical Jesus or there was not," which is true but which in itself does not help us to figure out which of the mentioned possibilities is the more probable one.

To this end, it seems, you have suggested that we reflect "on which of these are Just So Stories and which stand to reason." What is the definition of a Just So Story as the term is being used here? What would it take for a possibility to stand to reason, in your way of thinking about the problem?

Could you give a summary of the reasons that the third, fourth, and fifth items in your disjunction are implausible, if you regard them as implausible?

Is your disjunction complete? For example, you say, "Paul did not want to look into it anyhow." What about the possibility that Paul looked into the matter of the crucifixion a bit, for instance by consulting with Peter and James, and that this was satisfactory? While the premise that I stated was "Paul wanted to visit the site of crucifixion," you seem to be making a more general claim that Paul would have wanted to investigate the crucifixion somehow, but I don't think that this more general claim is enough to make the argument.

Also, you say, "or Paul was forcibly prevented from carrying out any such investigation/visit." My premise was, "Paul was able to visit the site of crucifixion with little difficulty." There may be other reasons for an inability to visit the site of crucifixion other than forcible prevention. For an example that comes to mind quickly, Paul may not have been able to get directions to the site of the crucifixion, if it were not known. This might mean that the name of the place of crucifixion in the gospels is not reliable, but it would not show that, "it is false that a historical Jesus was crucified by Pilate outside Jerusalem." Or, again, perhaps there was no forcible prevention in place but Paul did not feel comfortable, for whatever subjective reason, making the visit.

You have not yet said that it is implausible that "Paul is deliberately leaving out his failure to turn up any hard evidence or facts about Jesus' death" on the assumption that there was a Jesus. Do you think that it is implausible? I do not. After all, how long did the Romans keep those stakes up? There may have been nothing physical and identifiable specific to Jesus' crucifixion at the time that Paul was able to visit Jerusalem.

Overall, you stress that the argument is a probabilistic one, and I have to agree. But it is one such that there are many other, more important arguments that we have to tend to before this consideration enters into the equation of our approximation of the probability of an HJ at all. To start our investigation here could be compared to looking for stray historical Jesus traditions mentioned by Augustine or the Sufi mystics. This is not to say that it shouldn't be considered, but I do not believe that it should loom large over more basic arguments regarding the historical Jesus.

This may be why, according to my memory, Doherty did not mention this matter in his book.

best,
Peter Kirby

Toto

Peter - Doherty talks about this argument at page 73 of his book, but the 3 pages that he writes are more complex and possibly persuasive than the parody that is being discussed here.

Doherty argues that none of the Christian writers of the first century express a desire to visit any place associated with Jesus, from his putative birth in Nazareth to the places where he preached, to his death.

He quotes Paul as saying in Philippians 3:10 "All I care for is to know Christ, to experience the poser of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings. . ."

(p.74)

Doherty goes on to argue that Paul would probably have wanted to absorb more details about Jesus' life if only to be a better missionary and answer questions from his potential converts.

Doherty then argues that, not only was Paul not interested in holy places, but he and his fellow first century Christians had no interest in relics.

These arguments are 3 pages of a 380 page book. By themselves, of course, they are hardly a proof. They are more like the icing on the cake, the little bit of overkill from the debater who has already clinched his case on other grounds.

But you must wonder why 4th century Christians started making pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Bethlehem and manufacturing pieces of the cross and other relics, while first century Christians showed no interest, or at least not enough interest to leave a record.

Peter Kirby

Toto, thanks for pointing out that this is discussed in the book.

I don't think that I have made a parody. If you do, perhaps you could lay out the argument in terms of premises and a conclusion? I have in fact welcomed modification of the argument in the post in which I presented it.

Perhaps the largest thing that I noticed to be different in the quote that you offer, compared to the argument that I outlined, is that mention is made of Gethsemane and the tomb of Jesus. But, in fact, I have no disagreement with Doherty on the matter of the tomb of Jesus -- I myself have argued that the non-existence of tomb location traditions prior to the fourth century can be taken as an argument that Jesus was not laid in a tomb known to the early Christians (see "<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/peter_kirby/tomb/index.shtml" target="_blank">The Historicity of the Empty Tomb Evaluated</a>" in the II library). I restricted my presentation of the argument to the cross because the other potential holy sites attributed to Jesus in the gospels could be extraneous and in fact are spurious in the minds of many HJ scholars.

best,
Peter Kirby

Steven Carr

CARR
What are the reasons Paul was not known to the churches in Judea, when he was supposedly in Jerusalem persecuting them?

When I said that Paul complained about letters written in his name ,and forgot to give cites, I was assuming that you were familiar with what Paul had written. That was indeed glib of me.

However, if you wish to avoid answering my questions, then you are free to do so.

[ September 12, 2002: Message edited by: Steven Carr ]</p>

Toto

I thought that Radorth and Layman were arguing against what seemed to be a parody of Doherty's argument.

I think Doherty's argument is a bit of rhetorical flourish. But if I were going to deconstruct it into premises and conclusions, I would do something like:

(premises)
1. If a HJ had been crucified near Jerusalem in recent memory, early Christians would have known the location and venerated it, much as 4th century Christians looked for the location and tried to make it a sacred space.

2. If Paul had believed that a HJ was at the root of his new religion, he would have traveled to Jerusalem in short order to make contact with those who knew the HJ, to learn from them.

3. If Paul and other early Christians had believed in a recently crucified HJ, Paul would have learned of the site of the crucifiction.

4. Visiting this site would have been a signficant emotional experience for any early Christian (compare the emotional reaction to the site of the World Trade Center.)

5. Paul (and other first century Christians) would have wanted to visit this site.

6. Nothing would have prevented Paul from visiting this site. (He traveled widely after all, and was in Jerusalem.)

7. If Paul had visited this site, it would have been a signficant emotional event, and he would have at least mentioned it in a letter.

8. Since Paul was an active missionary who wanted to convert others, and was engaged in disputes with rivals, he would have wanted to shore up his arguments as best he could, and he would have looked for any historic remembrance of Jesus, including geographical sites and relics.

9. If other first century Christians had known about the site, they would have visited the site and recorded some of their reactions, which would have survived in some document or oral tradition, and they would have preserved relics of their encounter with the HJ.

(assumption for the reductio)
10. Assume that a historical Jesus was crucified by Pilate outside Jerusalem.

(counter facts)
11. However, there is no mention by Paul or any other early Christian of a visit to the site of the crucifixion or any other site connected to the HJ, and no record of any physical relics of him.

Therefore it is unlikely that Paul or early Christians based their religion on a HJ who was crucified within living memory.

I think that any imaginative apologist can come up with reasons why Paul may not have visited Calgary, may not have written about it if he did, or how the letter may not have survived even if he wrote about it, and how any relics would have been lost or destroyed around 70 CE. But when you consider all of the options - that Paul traveled freely, the church in Jerusalem was open and above ground, the early Christians felt free enough to worship in the Jewish Temples, that Paul recorded less signficant events, this particular lack of mention has to count for something.

And it is quite logical and rational to say it's just a place, the essence of the religion is x. But look at human psychology. Look at the people who travel to sacred spaces all over the world. Look at the way the World Trade Center is now a memorial. Look at how even modern scientific people get emotional at grave sites and cemetaries, how people try to preserve Civil War Battlefields as quasi-sacred sites. Were first century Christians so different?

So I don't think that Doherty was wasting the 1% of his book devoted to this argument. But I don't think it constitutes proof by itself that there was no historical Jesus.

Clutch

[PK mode] It could be compared to anything. Do you mean to actually compare it to these things? Please give a sound argument to this effect, mentioning the specifics of Augustinian and Sufi allusions to particular Jesus traditions. You should moreover justify your description of these traditions as "stray", rather than, say, atypical, marginal, or tangential. Then explain why the question of starting the investigation here should be thought relevant to the thread, since nobody has yet advocated this. Where your arguments are less than mathematically certain, be sure to explain the amount by which you believe them to raise the probability of their conclusions. [/PK mode]



Or, skip it. That's what I'm doing.

Peter Kirby

Hi Clutch,

Now that is what I call a parody. It doesn't advance dialogue much, however. I don't think that my questions and considerations consisted of avoidance, eristic, or logic chopping.

I was comparing such a post-Nicene search for Jesus traditions to the 'no holy sites' argument in the respect that neither are a very large factor in evaluating the probability of a HJ's existence. While naturally enough nobody has suggested "starting" the investigation here, nobody has to suggest it in order for me to state that we should not do so and therefore should, if we want to consider Doherty's ideas in an optimal manner, focus on other arguments first. In this discussion we have been talking about the veneration/relics argument alone, and I suggest that other arguments are of greater importance.

best,
Peter Kirby