keyser_soze

Vinnie

You totally avoided my question. How do you determine whether what Josephus writes is true or false? hopw do you know anything about ancient history? Lay out the method that you mechanically implement when studying ancient history.

I already addressed this and I am not happy about having to do so again. I DID NOT say Meier's methodology proves the historicty of Jesus. I said the methodology is based upon prior considerations of source and historicity (historical plausibility if you will). The Lord of the Ring's Trilogy would fail in this regard.

History cannot be reconstructed through the mechanical implemantation of such a method. Different sources are different and are to be treated differently. If an author is consistently reliable in known facts that gives him a higher level of credibility and vice versa. A simple question: Is Josephus more reliable than Luke? Do you think historians outside the Jesus field do not use multiple attestation? Isn't "ealier and multiply attested" material generally accepted over later and single attested historical datums? Don't all historians consider their sources and the laurels of the alleged author in question? Its possible lines of transmission, the authors redactional tendencies etc?

Should we use the same exact methodology when dealing with eyewitness testimony and second or third or fourth hand information? Isn't eyewitness granted a higher degree of probability? Different sources warrant different treatments. This hardly seems novel or controversial. The reason why Vork's critique fails is that the methodology follows a discussion of sources. Meier's methodology may work given his outlook on the sources in question but if his outlook on the sources in question is flawed then his methodology will produce untrustworthy results. Critique Meier's methodology within the context of his views on his sources. Otherwise, critique his views on the sources and this will prevent people from talking past one another.

I'll respond to IM's and the rest of your comments later.

Vinnie

Metacrock

Wait a minute! Kirby is a Myther? Since when? Peter could you clearify your position for me please?

Here's the evidence you asked for:

(I had to fix the link.One does one's best you know.


http://www.geocities.com/metacrock20...us_index2.html

Gurdur

It's all hit or myth ?

Metacrock

ahahahahahaha! good to see you again man.

Peter Kirby

No, I truly and objectively dislike the bother of responding to your nonsense. I know that what I have written in this thread holds up, and I am not obligated to write anything because you have the time to bang on a keyboard. If someone else will take up the torch of discussion, I might find it bearable to respond to them.

Peter Kirby

Goliath

Vinnie,

You have apparently ignored my latest response to you in this thread. Let me point out once again that by taking Jesus' existence to be an axiom, you are assuming what you are trying to prove. This is a logical fallacy, whence your argument for a historical Jesus fails.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Peter Kirby

There are over twenty-four theories on Jesus, and I don't think that any one has such conclusive evidence in its favor that those who doubt or disagree are necessarily irrational. Among other considerations, there is the problem that we don't have any eyewitness accounts.

If I were a gambling man, I would put my money on the theory of Sanders, Fredriksen, and Allison. Probably the best online presentation is that of Thomas Sheehan, The First Coming.

I was once a Jesus Myther myself, you know. I think that Jesus Mythers such as Earl Doherty have some good points and that we can learn a lot from honest exploration of the issue (which is not the same as polarization and polemics).

best,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

This is coming from the man who has never even read Meier and does not know how he implements his sources. Show me how Meier's is guilty of doing this. "As many a weary quester has remarked before, the use of the valid criteria is more an art than a science, requiring sensitivity to the individual case rather than mechanical implementation." (Meier, marginal 1 p. 184). Of course "historical plausibility is used as well. It factors into any judgment.

Actually, I have read some of Meier's stuff. But the issue is not whether we can validly use historical plausibility as tool for determining what and what is not history in the gospel legends. The issue is whether Meier's criteria can do so. They most certainly do not.

Fallacy alert! They are only worthless if that prior decision is inaccurate. There are independent vectors which all speak of a historical man. These are not fictional documents like the Lord of the Rings and so fourth.

There are no independent vectors that speak of Jesus as a historical person. All contain the legends of the Christian gospels, and all are interpolated.

Please prove that the gospel legends of Jesus are not fictions.

As an aside, it is funny that you refer to LotR as fiction, when Tolkien himself, in a mystical and complex way, thought it was real.

You know as well as I do that there are a million background decisions going on which all produce different interpretations. Does Mark date to 70 ad or 140? These are key questions. No one ever denied the necessity of evaluating the sources used.

Right, but the issue is whether Meier's criteria can be used to pull fact out of fiction even after this evaluation. They can't.

Vinnie, in order to perform this evaluation you first need a set of criteria that can identify what, if anything, is history in these documents. Meier's criteria won't work because no prior criteria for making the determination exist. If you turn these criteria loose on a document known to be fiction, they make it into history. The problem with that should be obvious. Meier works only based on some assumption that the gospel legends contain history about Jesus life. But there is no way to demonstrate that. People claim Meier's criteria can do that. They don't.

Josephus mentions Jesus in a passing glance and his brother James.

Interpolations, both, in a document of which several versions apparently existed, and which has been worked over by Christians.

GMark independently mentions this and Paul provides primary-contemporary source data on the existence of James, the brother of the Lord.

Also interpolations. And there is no mention of a blood relationship, nor of Jesus' mother or father, that would establish one. In history several people have declared themselves brothers of Jesus in colonial situations and led charismatic anti-colonial religious revolutionary movements (Nxele and Hong Hsiu-chuan, for example). Historical plausibility....

How can you determine that Josephus is not fiction?

Let's see. First, is the author in a position to know the events he claims to? Second, is it confirmed by other sources? Third, how does it relate to archaeology and history in general? Has the source been edited and redacted? etc. Is it historically plausible? Does the author incorporate events into a temporal framework? How does the author view things like causation and teleology? Does the author identify sources and is the author aware of how sources can be erroneous and conflict with each other? Does the author appear to have some commitment to telling the truth? Is the author aware of historical method? Could the author have had access to the sources he claims he had? Are the sources identifiable in the text? Also taking into account things like the author's apparent agenda, background, etc. Finally, you note that this conclusion is tentative and subject to revision.

Finally, I should note that I do not trust Josephus very much personally. Crucial accounts have clearly been tampered with by Christians, Josephus himself offers conflicting versions of some stories. The accounts are clearly not trustworthy in many places.

Actually, your view of the Gospels, Q and a hosto of other sources as fiction like the LotR's is bull shit.

You're right. It is fiction more like Robin Hood or King Arthur or the Taoist heroes, etc. Whatever analogy you want to make, the story of Jesus' life that we have is fiction. Maybe some person walked the earth and gave rise to that religion, maybe it didn't. We'll probably never know, though.

First give me a methodology for determining Josephus' works are historical and not fiction. I don't want none of that these other texts confirm Josephus as you've clearly established that multiple attestaion is bankrupt

No, I've stated that multiple attestation won't work because the texts are all aware of each other.

And what do you mean by which sources are historical? There is history intertwined with the Gospels. There was creativity but we can seem clear lines of limitations in certain points.

There are no limits. The Passion story is a complete invention from OT sources. Jesus' early life is a complete invention, in several different gospels. The Galilean ministry is a vehicle for the sayings. It is all invention. The history is only used to provide a framework. In the later gospels the authors do riffs on Mark. Clearly the trend was to use existing sources to build fictions around the name of Jesus. The way, for example, the Gospel of John was completed by interpolating hymns and moving around the kernels, and then adding the end of Mark. Does that look like historical writing to you?

I would say Mark, Paul, Q, John etc. They all speak of a man who walked the earth and died around 30 ad.

LOL. Prove it. Paul does not speak of a man who died around any particular time, much less in his own, and Q's man did not die at all. Mark does not give us a date of 30 either. Using Mark, Jesus had to have been whacked in 35 or 36.

Incidently, as we noted on JM the other day, the tradition about Wisdom makes exactly the same types of comments about Sophia -- she walked on earth by the gates of the city, etc. Do you think we should regard her as a historical woman? In fact, Paul apparently mines quite a bit of this tradition.

Of course Zeus walked on earth, ate, had sex, etc. I can show you the exact spots too....

Their genre is not fiction. That is why the embarrassment criterion can be used here and not in the LotR Trilogy.

Vinnie, the gospel genre is fiction using history as a frame. Like Centennial or The Flashman Chronicles.

People followed this man under the pretense that he said and did certain things and they wrote about them.

That's right, it was all pretense, from charismatics who were contacting Jesus directly. A mark of legitimacy in the movement was visions of Jesus, led by the man who called himself the Brother of the Lord. Did I just describe the early Christian movement? No, I was actually thinking about the Taipings.

When we look at the finished product of Mark it does not look like a person sat down and dreamt stuff up.

Yes, it most certainly does! He was extremely creative. The Passion story is constructed from OT sources, for example. And from whence cometh the miracle stories? The imagination of Mark, of course. For example, the madman whose demon went into pigs appears to have been built around the Roman legion occupying Judea in the 70s. Now that's imagination.....Mark built the "ministry" out of sayings, and commenced with the JBap story because JBAp's followers were a thorn in the side of nascent Christianity. Mark's gospel is fiction, theology, and politics. It is not history.

Mark consists of a bunch of individual pericopes that were stringed together which pushes us to an oral stage of preaching.

This is an assumption. As Crossan and many other scholars have demonstrated, oral transmission is creative and redactive. It preserves little but the framework, and even that gets transmuted eventually. There was never an oral stage, because it is all later invention. The oral stage is an invention of NT scholars who need to create a way to get the story from the alleged genesis in the 30s to the gospels written 70-100 years later. Otherwise, they would have to confess that it all began with Mark's riff on the OT and the Savior.

And no, Papias' is testimony that in the second century, and oral tradition had grown up around the gospel legends.

Mark strung together a story around a sayings tradition. That does not mean that the sayings were uttered by the person they were attributed to, nor does it mean that Mark's story is history. Once you delete the Galilean ministry as a vehicle for pericopes, and the passion as a riff on the OT, what is left? It's all fiction, Vinnie.

I haven't read T&M. I will eventualy. But as I've said, I mix his and Crossan's methodology. I agree that you need to always start with the first stratum.

Except that no one can identify the first stratum, Vinnie. Is it Thomas? Paul? The Didache?

You have no point. You've dreamt up idiocy. You've created a false dilemma here. "Determine whether the Gospels are history"??? This is not an all or nothing thing.

My bad. Whether anything in the Jesus story is history, I should have said.

We know the sayings material in GJohn is not history remembered. The Gospels contain history. That is the whole point of the exercise. Its not only they are either entirely history or fiction. There is a middle ground, Sherlock.

Oh, I quite agree that history is used as a frame for building the gospels, the history of Josephus, for example. The Jesus story itself is a fiction, however.

No. The method of extraction works under a prior consideration of source and historicity.

"prior consideration." And this is conducted how? And if you know the historicity of the story told, why do you need Meier?

What do you mean there is "no mutliple independent attestation"???

The sources are all familiar with each other, have been extensively redacted and interpolated, and exist in a cloud of forged and altered documents, as well as in the inveterate lying and mythologizing of humans when they consider founding figures.

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

Just a heads up. I stopped reading here where it was deemed that Josephus', Paul's and GMark's reference to James, the brother of Jesus are all interpolations. I have no intention of even reading the rest of your post, let alone responding to it.

What do I say? I dislike typing to you on this subject much more than Peter Kirby does.

Vinnie