Koyaanisqatsi

I have no problems at all agreeing that Socrates' factual existence is just as uncertain as Jesus'.

For that matter, I have no problems at all agreeing that Socrates' factual existence is just as certain as Jesus'.

Whether or not there once was a man named Socrates and this is the same man Plato immortalized by using him as a template for Plato's own teachings makes absolutely no difference at all to the possible question of whether or not Plato created any mythical (i.e., fictional) scenarios based on Socrates' existence.

It wouldn't even matter if Socrates factually existed and Plato claimed that Socrates was God! What Plato claims has little to nothing to do with the question of whether or not a man named Socrates factually existed, just as the question of whether or not a man named Socrates factually existed has little to no bearing on any claims Plato may (or may not) have written about such a person.

Just as we know that the name "Jesus" was in existence during the first century, it is just as likely that the name "Socrates" was in existence during Plato's youth, so the fact that there may have once been an actual person named either Socrates or Jesus, again, makes little to no difference to the question of the veracity of the claims made by any later authors in regard to either of those two names, yes?

The only thing that matters is the claims, not whether or not there was once a person who can be shown to have factually existed, named Jesus, since we would have absolutely no way of knowing if it's the same Jesus and, in fact, can safely bet that it is not, due to literary license.

For example, even if I culled every single character trait from an in depth and comprehensive study of Plato's Socrates and then wrote my own dialogue using that template, my work wold still never be useful in any way as a determinant factor in whether or not a man by the name of Socrates factually existed, and is therefore the template for the fictionalized characterization Plato used as a literary license.

Unless, of course, the claim--by Plato--is that he did nothing more than transcribe exactly what his teacher Socrates said, word-for-word, adding nothing and changing nothing; i.e., that the claim was an historically accurate document of exactly what Socrates actually spoke.

In which case, we'd only have to deconstruct--hell, just read--the material to see if that were indeed even possible, let alone probable.

In the case of Plato, hard to say, because it is both possible and probable that either scenario was true. A man named Socrates could have actually been his teacher and Plato transcribed everything he said word-for-word (or close enough to be considered an historically accurate document) or not; he just used a teacher he once knew as his template or just made it all up out of whole cloth.

As for the supposed eyewitnesses of the synoptics, however, even the most cursory read proves they could not have been eyewitnesses to the events they describe, setting aside the fact that we know fairly conclusively that the earliest of them (Mark) wasn't even written until around thirty to forty years after any alleged events!

No matter what else, at best we know that they cannot be anything more than recollections of events and things said.

Factor in other simple clues--such as the alleged fact that no one was with Jesus in the wilderness but Satan--and you have irrefutable proof that the authors were simply making up the details and the dialogue out of whole cloth.

So, especially in the case of the claims regarding a man named Jesus, whether or not there factually existed a man somewhere in the Middle East between the years 0 and 33 C.E. named "Jesus" has, IMO, little to no relevancy to the claims made by later authors about that man.

Sure, if you could prove conclusively that such a man did not exist...then...

But you can't.

We know there were men named Jesus living in that region--lot's of them, probably (such as Jesus, the son of Damneus, who Josephus tells us was made high priest by King Agrippa after tossing out Ananus for persecuting a christian, Antiquities, Volume 20, Chapter 9, Section 1) so it is literally impossible to state there were no men named Jesus who lived at that time.

I know what you're thinking. But we can establish that it wasn't that particular man described in the Bible...

But you can't.

Just like with Socrates, so long as there actually was somebody living in the region who went by the name "Jesus," then there just is no way for anyone to say, "But that particular man wasn't the man the authors of the bible based their myth upon," nor is there any reason to say it.

We know the gospels aren't factual accounts of actual events simply by the date and literary licenses taken by the authors if nothing else.

End of story.

[ August 01, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

Agnos1

Let me insert my naivete' at this point in the discussion. I didn't mean to imply that the question of Socrates' existence was equally questionable. I meant to compare Jesus to an unquestionable figure and inadvertently picked one that may very well have been a Plato construct. My Bad. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Although the line of the thread took on its own interesting course, I might ask again, based on solid and scholarly historical methodology, how does Jesus historocity compare to that of-- (Agnos looks into his bag of historical figures) okay, Cleopatra?

I think PopeInTheWoods caught the flavor of my intent best, so it's worth another read in that regard.

My guess is that with Jesus we are left with nothing but "faith" (see PITW's post) that a human being existed, whereas the corrobaration of various written testimonies and documents give us much reason to believe that Cleopatra actually existed.