Ted Hoffman

Kirby, first of all I would like to state that your statement above seems to be patently a case of rhetorical aggrandizement (as Vork would put it). By using the word "methodology", you are overinflating your "accomplishment" in making the above argument. What you are attempting to refute is an argument, not a methodology.

Secondly, if we reverse MortalWombat's argument to:

Early writings = lack of historical and biographical info
Later writings = lack of historical and biographical info

It still doesn't prove the existence of Jesus. So refuting her argument doesnt disprove its validity, instead, it demonstrates the versatility of the position she was supporting.

What makes your argument weak is the fact that Rutherford wouldnt be expected to have had even second hand info concerning Jesus' historical life (given he was born centuries later after Jesus' death)

Rutherford was a believer and obviously believed what the mythmakers (as Amos would put it) had written. You tell me how many believers out of 100 are interested in critical examination of the facts/ myths concerning Jesus' life.

The excerpts of Rutherford's letters were "spiritual" in nature. We wouldnt expect him to "tone down" or "dilute" such deep spiritual messages with earthly, "carnal" and mundane details now would we?

What you need to do is to demonstrate that at one point in Rutherfords letters, he was concerned with imparting historical messages about Jesus to the people he was writing to. Then you will have a case. Or that he was writing to an audience that was interested in historical information. (heck, I have written to my fiancee that she is the angel of my life).

At the time Rutherford was writing, he had no way of knowing truth from fiction himself (unless you can provide evidence that he did research and was well-versed with historical tomes of the first century Galilee or Judaea - the methods of New Testament scholarship were quite inferior compared to what we have today - higher criticism etc) so sharing his "testimony" with us and using it as proof is like using a pastors letters today to prove that Mythical references of Jesus do not prove Jesus was mythical.

IOW, it doesnt prove a thing one way or the other.

Your question and answer above would only server to further reinforce the argument that there is no historical evidence for Jesus' existence (because those guys werent interested in history anyway - heck Josephus must have been considered crazy to bother with writing historical info).
So it doesn't add to the argument.

Is there any evidence that the 1st century people were not interested in dates, places concerning historical characters etc?
No.

Where does that leave us?

Does that therefore mean anyone with historical facts would therefore not be interested in writing or mentioning them for fear of being irrelevant? That it was fashionable to omit historical data in "testimonies" concerning Jesus?

If NOT, do you have a plausible explanation concerning why "educated" people like Paul never bothered with facts?

If you can argue that, then we will have something to examine.

Doherty focuses on letter's that were written a few decades after Jesus' alleged death. And in circumstances that would have demanded mention of historical evidence from Paul and "the others".

Doherty also uses historical silence (not just epistolary silence).
And we have people like Celsus who argued for the mythical nature of Jesus.

Even if your argument were satisfactory, it would be unsound based on the huge number of questions it would leave unanswered:

The preponderant lack of any historical mention of Jesus.

Letters from a 17th Century believer can't wave that away

Clutch

Peter,Sorry, I'm not quite understanding why that is relevant.

The people to whom Paul was witnessing did not positively claim that there was no Jesus, presumably, for all the same reasons that you, Peter, have never positively claimed that there is no Varley Naylor from Outlook, Saskatchewan.

But if your mission was to convince people of the truth of "Varley Naylor from Outlook, Saskatchewan was God Incarnate", and you possessed evidence that such a person, at a minimum, existed, wouldn't it be surprising if you never gave any such evidence in your attempts at persuasion?

Geoff Hudson

Peter,

Tertullian in Apologeticus 3.5 defines “Christian” to mean “anointing”. A Christian was thus an anointed one. This can only have one interpretation, namely that the anointing was that of the Spirit as happened to the prophets such as Elijah, Moses etc., down to Zechariah and John the prophet in the NT. So being a Christian around 150 CE, the time of Tertullian, did not mean that you believed in an earthly Jesus. In the same passage, Tertullian points out that the Romans failed to understand the word and mispronounced it as Chrestian which was a name derived from the word for “kindness”. His plea was that the name Christian was hated (as inconsistently, was the name Chrestian), and was used by magistrates to justify the punishment of those to whom the epithet was applicable.

In 5.2, Tertullian says, “in the age of Tiberias, the Christian name went out into all the world.” One might have expected this of the name of Jesus, but here it is Christian – one who has been anointed by the Spirit. He says that Tiberias overruled the Senate in giving his approval to the name, threatening those who accused the Christians (the anointed ones). In this passage, there are no references to the birth or death of Jesus as the start of the new movement, or “school” as Tertullian describes it.

Geoff

MortalWombat

I was referring to the Christian correspondence at the time when Christianity was forming, when one would expect the early writings to contain at least some historical and biographical information, which isn't the case.

Tharmas

Hi Peter,

I believe you’ve made an extremely interesting contribution, although I too believe you may have overstated it a bit when you use the word “conclusively.”

For the record I am not a “Jesus Myther,” although I believe Doherty and Wells (among the ones I’m familiar with) have raised some valid questions. In other words, I believe that what we mean when we talk about the historicity of Christ is an active, open, and exciting field of historical inquiry.

Why I think your little thought experiment is significant but not necessarily conclusive is because there are as many differences between the two collections of letters as there are similarities, and by exploring those differences as well as the similarities we can perhaps also learn something.

For example, critics of the argument from silence, with regards Paul’s letters, often raise the objection that the people to whom Paul wrote already knew all about Jesus, his life and ministry, and therefore Paul had no need to remind them.

Now, regardless of how we value that argument with regards Paul, we can surely apply it to Rutherford. Rutherford wrote in the full confidence that his readers were completely familiar with the entire Bible, both Testaments, and had been since childhood. He wrote in an age of almost universal Belief, and Christianity was the only game in town. Moreover, Rutherford wrote to individuals, not churches. These individuals were in every case personal friends or otherwise well known to him. In this case we really can be sure that the author knew very well how much his readers understood, and where they might lack instruction.

A possible similarity (which I don’t believe has been mentioned) arises from the dates on Rutherford’s letters. He writes on the eve of the English Revolution, which of course was a religious civil war. As the Church of England became more codified and hierarchical, the Puritans (whom Rutherford represents) sought a more personal contact with God. I believe we find the concern for Divine Immanence, as expressed in these letters, expressive of this fact. I believe there is a similarity to Paul’s experience of Christ, as you point out, Peter. How this may relate to the general eschatological sense of Paul’s letters, which I find lacking in Rutherford, I don’t know. Both lived in extremely turbulent times. I’m simply raising the question.

I’ve made a list of some of the differences:

Paul:
Addressed entire churches collectively.
Wrote before any other documents about Jesus existed.
Was a member of the “first generation,” actively attempting to codify Christianity as a religion.
Often expressed concerns with formulating Church doctrine, authority.

Rutherford:
Addressed individuals, either personal friends or others well-known by him.
Could be certain his readers had a working knowledge of entire New Testament.
Wrote when Christianity had been state religion (locally) for 1000 years.
Was part of a movement looking for a personal (non-authoritarian) experience of Jesus.

I believe these differences are equally as significant as the similarities you point out.

Thanks for the fun!

Jayhawker Soule

Thanks, Peter, that was an interesting read. It seems, however, that Toto raises a good point: should we be surprised that a Puritan minister might write letters in manner inspired by earlier epistles with which he was no doubt familiar?

Peter Kirby

To be clear, the word was used to indicate that the method by which some Jesus Myth writers determine whether a person believed in an earthly Jesus is flawed. Some Jesus Mythicists use the method that, if there are no knock-down explicit references to events in the life of Jesus in extant letters, if the writer uses mythological or spiritual language, if the writer uses analogies from the Old Testament, and if the writer alludes to Gospel sayings without attribution to Jesus, then that writer did not believe in an earthly Jesus. This is a method that is unsound, as I have pointed out. I am not interested in aggrandizement but rather intelligent discussion. I am also not interested in pointless semantic disputes, and I have no problem with saying that this is an 'argument' and not a 'method'.

Let me assure you that I have no intention of convincing anyone of the existence of Jesus. I am strictly a Jesus agnostic and am more interested in the argumentation than in the particular conclusions reached.

Since the argument under discussion here is a positive one for the mythical nature of Jesus -- namely, that the alleged silence of Paul shows that Paul disbelieved in an earthly Jesus -- a refutation of that argument need not also be a demonstration of the opposite. Particularly when I don't even believe in the opposite.

MortalWombat's argument, as I understand it, is that there is a definite progression in the history of Christian literature: there was a period in which absolutely nothing refers to an earthly Jesus, and then people started writing about the earthly Jesus in their documents. The inference is that people in the earlier period disbelieved in an earthly Jesus because the extant literature is (believed to be) silent. However, that inference can be shown to be unsound if a person who is known to believe in the earthly Jesus wrote in a similar way in respect of mentioning details of an earthly Jesus. This makes it false to claim a straight line of development. Rather, there are persons who believed in an earthly Jesus yet who have left letters that make no reference to the particular details of his life. Since this is true, how sure can we be that the author of Paul's letters disbelieved in an earthly Jesus?

This seems to have developed into a Standard Refutation, but it is not as significant as it might be thought to be. For one thing, Rutherford did believe that he had second hand information about Jesus' historical life in the form of the Four Gospels. Rutherford believed this information to be reliable, as did most of his correspondents. So Rutherford could have drawn on stories about the life of Jesus if he so chose, not unlike the way Paul could have (and it is insisted that Paul would have). But the point is that the author of this epistolary literature did not find it necessary to refer to the specific details of the life of Jesus, even though he knew of such details. Since this is so, how confident should we be that Paul would have made a point of referring to stories of the life of Jesus in his letters?

Are you claiming that people in the time of Paul were more interested in critical examination of the facts/myths concerning Jesus' life? This is a genuine question, as your argument is unclear to me here.

What makes you think that the same does not apply to the authors of the New Testament epistles?

"So that we henceforth know no one according to flesh; but if even we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know [him thus] no longer." - 2 Corinthians 5:16

(This doesn't prove the existence of Jesus.)

I do not believe that I have to demonstrate this, as I don't believe that the authors of the New Testament epistles were concerned to any greater degree with imparting historical details--only Christ and him crucified.

You must be confused, as I have not used the "testimony" of Rutherford to show the existence of Jesus. Not at all.

What I have shown is that a person could write in the way that Rutherford does yet still maintain a belief in an earthly Jesus. This can be taken as a point of comparison for the argument that the authors of the New Testament epistles disbelieved in an earthly Jesus.

This thread is not about historical evidence for Jesus. This thread was initiated because the argument that the authors of the New Testament epistles disbelieved in an earthly Jesus is questionable.

Actually, Josephus was given a comfortable living arrangement that allowed him to be a historian of the intriguing events of a nation that rose against Roman rule and whose outcome included an emperor from a new house, namely the Flavian dynasty. Josephus is aware of a long tradition of ancient history (which of course was not conducted in the same way as history today), including others who had attempted to tell the story of the Jewish revolt.

They could have been interested in such matters without filling their letters with mention of them.

With a considerably weaker argument that Paul et al. disbelieved in an earthly Jesus.

The New Testament epistles were not catechisms nor testimonies to persuade skeptics nor chronicles of the life of Jesus. They were apparently written to resolve problems among those who were already believers.

Christian epistles were not written to recite facts about the life of Jesus.

Doherty also extends his argument to include such writers as the author of 2 Peter and the second century apologists. But 2 Peter contains an allusion to the Johannine appendix in 2 Pt verse 1:14. So it is clear to me that Doherty's argument 'proves too much'.

I think that a good historical argument from silence can be made concerning a global darkness and rising of the saints to prance through Jerusalem. I don't have enough evidence to go beyond that.

Have you read Origen's Contra Celsum? Celsus alleges that Jesus learned the magical arts in Egypt.

Do you have a huge number of questions? I see one, the "preponderant lack of any historical mention of Jesus."

What I have shown is that the collected epistles of a 17th century believer could exhibit a similar "lack of any historical mention of Jesus." This casts doubt on the claim that a person (such as Paul) could not have written in this way yet still believe in an earthly Jesus.

Thanks for your comments.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

I had written: "Is there any evidence that people in the time of Paul were claiming that there was no earthly Jesus, or that they needed eyewitness testimony to his existence? No."

This would be surprising if and only if there was or would be some doubt about whether such a person existed. I see no reason to assume that there would be such doubt with regards to existence; where there was doubt in antiquitiy, the only evidence indicates that it concerned such claims as divinity (for a pipsqueek nobody like Jesus who was shown a failure in his crucifixion) and resurrection from the dead (a concept which was seen as grotesque in Greek culture). Also, I don't see any of the New Testament epistles as being written to persuade outsiders.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

Hi MortalWombat,

The point of the initial post was to cast doubt on the claim (thus far unevidenced) that a person who accepted that Jesus was the name of a human being would have necessarily written some biographical information in his extant letters.

Furthermore, is it known that there are no verses in the NT epistles in which the author refers to an earthly Jesus? At best, I think a Jesus Myth advocate can claim that there are plausible alternatives to an earthly interpretation, but I don't think that these alternatives have been shown to be true. For example, can anyone here show that 1 Cor 2:6-8 has nothing to do with Jesus being crucified on earth? I have read Doherty's attempt, but the case is not convincing, as we have discussed in an earlier thread. Thus, there are some passages for which there are mythical interpretations, but I do not have evidence to claim that the author of the Paulines never referred to an earthly Jesus.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

Thanks for your reply. The point that I made is that a person could write in the manner of these epistles yet still believe in an earthly Jesus. There is no doubt that Rutherford was influenced by the New Testament writings, though it is quite doubtful that Rutherford made a conscious decision to avoid mentioning the career of Jesus because he noted a silence in the New Testament epistles. The silence in these letters is natural.

best,
Peter Kirby