Bede

Vork, in one of his sweeping asides, made mention of how legendary/founder figures like Buddha, Arthur, Robin Hood and Buddha have their existences doubted. He believes, by analogy, we should therefore doubt Jesus's existence. His argument is of course totally fallacious (similar to saying aether and impetus were wrong scientific theories so evolution must be too) but let's see exactly why.

First, the strawmen - Robin, Arthur and the Buddha.

Robin Hood's legend is placed in the reign of Richard I while he was away crusading in the 1190s. There is no written mention of him at all until Piers Plowman in 1377 - about two hundred years later. Some ballads later written down appear to date to about fifty years earlier than this. This is an enormous gap but many historians are quite happy that a certain outlaw may have been the foundation of the myth cycles. It is not possible to say Robin did not exist but we have to wait one hundred and fifty years after his death before anyone had even heard of him - that is the equivalent of the first sign of Christians not being Paul in c55AD, but Iraeneus in 180AD with nothing at all pre dating him. Clearly the analogy between Jesus and Robin is absurd.

Arthur is widely thought to have been real (Jan Morris and Geoffrey Ashe both have books on the subject). The earliest mention of this fifth century king is one line ("But he was not Arthur") in the 'Godaddin' by a bard called Aneiran about 600AD. To get anything else we must wait for Nennius's Historia Brittonium of about 800AD although that collection preserves earlier traditions. The evidence for Jesus is a million times better but historians still think Arthur probably existed.

Buddha lived around 500BC but almost nothing about his life is known. The texts that tell about him date up to several centuries AD and many of the myths can be seen in other Hindu hero cycles. That said, again his existence is widely accepted although due to evidence which is much later and poorer than for Jesus.

Vork also mentioned Confucius. Just to be clear - his existence and some details of his life are unquestionable. I'm sure Vork can dig up a nutter who thinks otherwise but I can find a huge number of creationists which doesn't mean we cast doubt on evolution.

For religions we know about there usually is a 'founder' and he is always a real person. Take Muhammed, Joseph Smith and even L Ron Hubbard. By analogy we would expect Christianity to have a founder who is venerated as such (which excludes Paul).

A better example than Vork's strawmen of a historical figure who became a legend is Roland. Einhard writing in 820AD tells us that he was the Count of Brittany and killed during an ill fated expedition by Charlemagne into Moorish Spain in 778AD. The gap of 40 years between Einhard and the death of Roland is almost the same as between Mark and Jesus. Einhard (who was about 5 when the count died) never knew Roland but knew people who did - much like Mark. No historian thinks Roland to be anything other than a real leader in Charlemagne's warband. But that hasn't stopped the magnificent Song of Roland (redacted about 1100) from being based on him together with a huge amount of other romantic stories that probably began soon after his death.

We can use analogy as a historical method if we are careful to compare like with like. We find then that religions usually have real founders and that having a myth based around your life doesn't mean you cease to exist yourself. By selecting figures where, unlike for Jesus, the evidence is late and scanty, Vork tries to compare totally different cases. No wonder his conclusion is way off beam.

The evidence for Jesus is better than for any of the figures above. It is also much better than for Roland as we don't have to rely on a single chronicler but instead have at least Mark, Q, Paul, Josephus and John. So historical method, poperly applied gives us a water tight case that Jesus existed.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede's Library - faith and reason</a>

tragic_pizza

Josephus is doubtful, Q does not, as far as we know, exist, Mark claims (at least if one interprets GMark so) to have known Jesus at elast peripherally, and you forgot (?) AMatthew.

Other than that, though, spot on.

lpetrich

Let's see about Bede's sources for Jesus Christ:

Mark -- Earl Doherty proposes that that document is some Midrash, a sort of allegory.

Q -- A collection of sayings that was projected onto a founding figure: JC.

Paul -- For him, JC was a sort-of god, not someone who had had a detailed human career. He seems ignorant of the Gospels, and he had no interest in visiting important places in the Gospels' life of JC.

Josephus -- A few very short, out-of-character, and very controversial comments that tell us very little if they were genuine. If JC had existed, I'm sure that Josephus would have discussed him in as much detail as he had discussed other self-styled prophets.

John -- Often considered a later invention. Asimov's Guide to the Bible suggests that it may be compared to Plato's Dialogues.

I think that there is good reason to suspect that the accounts of JC are too shrouded with mythology to be taken seriously as word-for-word literal history -- that has happened to other revered founder figures.

Or is JC the only revered founder figure in history that nobody has ever created myths about, despite there having been abundant opportunities for doing so?

Toto

I think this is a diversion, even if it is fun. The examples cited are just to show that there are some legendary and quasi-legendary figures who have pseudo-histories. Merely being written about is not proof of existence, as is shown by the William Tell example.

But type "did Confucius exist" into a search engine and you find:

Did the Chinese sage really exist? If so, did he have much to do with the religious and ethical system that bears his name? Could Confucianism have been invented by Jesuit missionaries?

One theory is that

The author of this article, Charlotte Allen, has written a book on the search for the historical Jesus. (It describes the search for Jesus but says relatively little about the historical Jesus himself. I have a copy and may post a review when I finish reading it.)

lpetrich

I wonder why Layman, Bede, and the like get so broken up over the hypothesis that JC had never existed. JC, if he had existed, was a revered founder figure, someone that his followers tend to make myths about -- as has happened to various other revered founder figures.

The next question is, of course, what parts of the Gospels do these gentlemen consider unhistorical, and why do they come to that conclusion?

RyanS2

Bede simply refuses to acknowledge a simple fact. Humans are extremely gullible. It reminds me of a science fair project by a senior in high school. He had a project about the evil chemical dihydrogen monoxide, which destroys property, ruins land, and is produced by thousands of chemical companies and cars. He had a paper asking people to sign a ban on this horrible chemical. He told all people that before they signed, they should ask a chemistry professor what dihydrogen monoxide is to be sure of it, but most people just went ahead and signed the paper anyway. Dihydrogen monoxide is a fancy way of saying "Water", (H2O), and his project was called "How gullible are we?" Now, if in today's modern World, at a SCIENCE FAIR, (this was a national science fair if I remember correctly), could fool 90% of the people there to sign a petition, how much harder would it be to fool people, who by all accounts from historians of that period, (unless they suddenly are no longer valid), were stupid, credible, and uneducated? Heck, we don't even have to speculate that, we can read their tombstones to show that they had only a second grade level of Latin or Greek knowledge.

So, let's talk about faking religions:

<a href="http://hoary.org/scand/invent.html" target="_blank">http://hoary.org/scand/invent.html</a>

<a href="http://ejmas.com/jalt/jaltart_friday_0301.htm" target="_blank">http://ejmas.com/jalt/jaltart_friday_0301.htm</a>

This deals with a concept called Bushido, just like chivalry, (sp?), it's mostly fake. Joseph McCabe on chivalry:

<a href="http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/jmchival.htm" target="_blank">http://www2.prestel.co.uk/littleton/jmchival.htm</a>

Want more examples? The Boston-tea party wasn't caused by British tea taxes, the British had lifted the taxation on tea. Dutch tea-smugglers lost their monopoly on the market, and thus lead the Boston Tea Party.

Abraham Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation" didn't free any slaves. He tried to free slaves in territories he didn't control, while allowing slave trade to go on in states he did control.

So, if it's possible to fool people with subjects that are easily researchable, in times where the literacy rate is MUCH MUCH higher than it ever was in all of the ancient World, where transportation to research these facts is also easier, then why should I assume that it would be somehow more difficult to pull this same sham on people from a distant past? I think THAT is what the comparisons between various psuedo-historical characters and Jesus is hinting at, the level of omniscience that apologists claim is completely without backing in the real World.

King Arthur

Whaddya mean?! Of course I'm real! Duh!

Vorkosigan

Bede has mixed up the issues. I have no doubt that there was someone under the Arthur story, and Roland as far as I know was a real person. But the legends that coalesced around their names reflect little or none of the reality of their existence. Did Arthur live at Camelot, get killed by his son, traffic in magic with Merlin and have a large round table?

A good example is the story of Roland. The epic of the defeat at Roncesvalles has always been one of my favorite stories. Roland, leading the rearguard, is killed in the pass of Roncesvalles by the Muslim invaders of Spain. There are many embarassing details -- starting with the defeat, of course, but also Roland's stubbornness in refusing to blow the horn to summon help. Using the subjective criteria set forth in the Hunt for the HJ, that would imply that these stories are real and preserve real events.

Actually, the defeat at Roncesvalles was at the hands of the Basques, not the Moors. The transformative effect of religious belief (in this case, drumming up support for the Crusades) has clearly warped the story -- the small rearguard becomes large, the basque ambushers a Moorish horde, a minor figure, Count Hruodland of the Breton March, becomes Roland of legend the perfect night and nephew of Charlemagne, undergoing much embellishment and expansion. Certainly there are some historical facts underlying the legend, but the legend as written reflects few, if any of them. While Einhard's account mentions "Hruodland," other major figures of the poem are absent. According to Einhard, revenge was impossible, but in the epic Charlemagne returns for immediate revenge that leads to his blitz conquest of Spain.

The legend of Jesus works the same way. No doubt there is a kernel under there that relates to one of the composite figures of the story, the Crucifixion, which records an execution embellished into legend. Was there really a Crucifixion by the Romans? Who knows? Certainly there is no way to find out, since currently NT scholars possess no method for sorting out fact from fiction in that morass of legend and propaganda.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Buddha lived around 500BC but almost nothing about his life is known. The texts that tell about him date up to several centuries AD and many of the myths can be seen in other Hindu hero cycles. That said, again his existence is widely accepted although due to evidence which is much later and poorer than for Jesus.

Assuming that the gospels reflect reality, and Jesus was actually executed in 30 AD. But that is the point at issue here. It is noteworthy that large shifts forward in time are common in such legends. There is no reason to assume that Jesus was executed under Pilate, anymore than there is to assume that Charlemagne's conquest of Spain actually occurred as depicted in the Chanson de Roland.

Vork also mentioned Confucius. Just to be clear - his existence and some details of his life are unquestionable. I'm sure Vork can dig up a nutter who thinks otherwise but I can find a huge number of creationists which doesn't mean we cast doubt on evolution.

Just to be clear, "nutters" just published a several books on this very topic, reviewed by Charlotte Allen<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99apr/9904confucius.htm" target="_blank">here</a>, who seems to be sympathetic to the POV that old Kung tz didn't exist.

Charlotte Allen, for those of you who do not know, is a right-wing Catholic commentator/apologist. Bede in fact relied on one of her whitewashes of the Inquisition to produce his abortive site on the Inquisition. I am relieved and delighted to find out that he agrees she is a "nutter."

Here is Allen's opening:

"East Asian technocrats and modernists in Beijing, among others, are eagerly embracing an updated Confucianism -- even as scholars in the West ask some eyebrow-raising questions. Did the Chinese sage really exist? If so, did he have much to do with the religious and ethical system that bears his name? Could Confucianism have been invented by Jesuit missionaries?"

She reviews books by respected scholars Brooks & Brooks and Lionel Jensen. They are not nutters, but active and original researchers. As Allen notes:

"Last year the American Academy of Religion awarded Jensen's Manufacturing Confucianism its prize for the best first book in religious history. And the solid scholarship evident in the Brookses' The Original Analects (though not necessarily the book's conclusions) has been endorsed by two of America's leading experts on classical China, David S. Nivison, of Stanford, and Frederick W. Mote, of Princeton."

The nutter book apparently won a prize...

Vorkosigan

[ June 01, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

RyanS2

Vorkosigan, I can think of another case like what you're talking about. In "History of the Art of War, Volume III: Medieval Warfare" by Hans Delbruck, he talks a bit about the early Muslims conquests. Most of the conquests were political rather than by military might, but it impressed the people moreso to have epic battles with outrageously large troops, (two tribes numbering 80,000 on each side fully-armed and equipped with horses). Based upon the geography of where it was at, (too small to host that many people), they were too far from supplies, (that many horses and people would guzzle up food in no time, and this is Arabia, not the easiest place to get food and water), and that troops that large make so much noise that commanders couldn't control them, he concludes that even if the battles had happened, they were mostly mythical.

A more reasonable estimate would be troops ranging in the low thousand at most, and less than a few hundred horse-mounted troops. So, if we could prove 300 Arabs fought each other in a battle, does that prove the story of 160,000 Arabs fighting in a battle to be true? Finding the "historical kernal" and finding the actual history of an event are two different things. Just because George Washington existed doesn't mean the scene at the cherry tree is true.