Ted Hoffman

Iaison
Hmm...
Perhaps you didn't actually READ my posts - you seem to have missed the CRUCIAL distinction between Jesus of Nazareth and Iesous Christos the Logos.
Yes,
the NT epistles mention Iesous Christos - in high spiritual terms with NO historical setting - no dates, names, or places.
But no, the NT epistles do NOT mention Jesus of Nazareth - i.e. the words "Nazareth", "Mary", "Joseph", "Bethlehem", "Pilate", etc. are NOT mentioned by any 1st century author.

Wow, wow, wow Iaison, whether or not we can distinguish them, I think is not a required qualification for anyone to competently argue in this thread unless you care to explain, I think you are splitting hairs.

Christians came up with the trinity to conflate all those "components" of Jesus. Why did he have to resurrect bodily if the distinction is so important? In any case, this idea of christ being Logos came centuries after Jesus' supposed death and resurrection <a href="http://www.al-sunnah.com/true_message_of_jesus.htm" target="_blank">This site</a> says:

and another thing, you mix two matters in this statement: the NT epistles do NOT mention Jesus of Nazareth - i.e. the words "Nazareth", "Mary", "Joseph", "Bethlehem", "Pilate", etc. are NOT mentioned by any 1st century author
ie NT epistles and 1st century authors. So which is it? Please make the statement more meaningful.
Because I believe some of the Gospels were written in the 1st century (ie. 70 CE to 100 CE). Your statement implies that the epistles were'nt written by 1st century authors.

I don't follow your emphatic assertion: "without any historical references" In Micah 5:2 his birthplace is prophesised: "But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past."
Isn't Israel real? (the people at least)

Matthew 2:1
"After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived unexpectedly in Jerusalem"
Jerusalem isn't real? Is it a high sounding spiritual term?

Luke 2:39 "When they had completed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth."

Mark 6:3
"Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And aren't His sisters here with us?" So they were offended by Him." Are "carpenter", "son of Mary", "brother of James" high spiritual terms?

And plenty more.

Alexis
So we meet again. This time I will be decorous and demur.

Christianity was a tiny irrelevant eastern cult - NO ONE CARED!!!!! You are incapable of getting out of your anachronistic mind set where Christianity is important.

If No one cared, why was christ crucified?
And no one paid attention when he entered "the great city" on the back of a donkey?
If no one cared, why was he taken from the cross after he had been supposedly crucified? And yet the same was not done for the other criminals?
What about the account of Herods' baby killing spree? Does that tell us how much no one cared?
And the Magi? No one cared indeed.
You want to tell us someone could heal the sick, multiply loaves and fish and no one cared? People weren't sick those days or the ones with the sick just weren't willing to travel far and wide seeking treatment?

The tombs opened and the dead walked in the streets and no one cared?

Please.

[ June 24, 2002: Message edited by: IntenSity ]</p>

Alexis Comnenus

Intensity, only one point. You are picking out many bits of the Gospels that historians accept are not historical. Read some Crossan and get back to me.

Ted Hoffman

Alexius,
Is it possible that after I have read Crossan, when challenged during an argument, I will also respond "read some Crossan and then get back to me"? If thats the case, I don't think I need bother because I dont take cues from cop-outs.

If you have an argument, make it.

Alexis Comnenus

My argument was that you were asking why people didn't notice events that no one considers historical. So the answer to your question is "Because they didn't happen". You are erecting what is called a strawman.

Ted Hoffman

Alexis
So the answer to your question is "Because they didn't happen"
Thank you. So there was no historical Jesus. I am glad we agree on this.

Alexis Comnenus

Intensity, stop being an idiot. What historians agree didn't happen was:

Hence you argument is a worthless strawman.

The Romans certainly crucified people without a care in the world and your point that we should have a record of every dead trouble maker is stupid beyond belief.

Tercel

Iasion,
If you mean your posts in this forum. Then no, I haven't read very many of your posts. If you are referring to your posts in this thread, I would think that my responding to them might suggest I had read them.

Yes the epistles mention JC in high spiritual terms - Christian doctrine holds him to be "very God of very God", so it would be rather worrying if such was not present in the NT. However, Jesus is not always or soley mentioned in high spiritual terms, while there are certainly no dates ("...names, or places" is a rather dubious statement) -the epistles aren't supposed to be biographies of Jesus- nethertheless there are occaisional snippets of information about the historical Jesus.

Before going any further I think we need to discuss Arguments from Silence and evidence.
An argument from silence is always dangerous as it proceeds from a lack of evidence, not any actual evidence itself. An argument from silence has the form:
1. If Y was true, person X (or people in general) would have known.
2. Had X (or people in general) known about Y they would have written about it.
3. Had they written about it, we would be aware of it.
4. We are not aware of anything.
C. Therefore Y is false.

The logic is valid, however the style of argument suffers from a number of deficiencies, one corresponding to each premise.
a. People do not know everything that is true. We cannot say for certain whether writer X would have known had Y been true.
b. People do not write everything they know is true. People often do not write what might be expected: they have their own motives and thoughts. What they consider important is often different to what we consider important. This forms the most major problem with arguments from silence, and is the primary reason why such arguments are regarded as dubious.
c. We often do not have the complete set of writings of ancient authors. We cannot be certain that a writer did not write about something if we don't have their writings.
d. There are occaisionally disputes about whether something attributed to the writer was actually written by the writer. Unless there is certainty that what is attributed to the writer is falsely attributed then we are arguing from a non-existent silence.

When dealing with historical reality we can almost never be sure about either of the first two premises, making even the strongest arguments from silence relatively weak. What it comes down to is that the tiniest amount of positive evidence is worth an order of magnitude more than a lack of evidence.

As far as this concerns us: You're presenting an argument from silence for the non-existence of the Historical Jesus (and other things too). Yet you break every single one of the above listed problems with your argument. Arguments from silence are not good at the best of times, but the argument you present is rendered completely and utterly worthless.

Anyway, back to your argument from silence regarding the Gospels. The vast majority of professional scholars, liberals and atheists included believe the Gospels should all be dated to the first century. Yet you in your wisdom of arguing from silence believe otherwise. Your reasons for this:

• The Gospels are not even MENTIONED until early-mid 2nd century
• The Gospels are not cited until mid 2nd century
  =&gt; Not mentioned by who? Consider the 4 points required to establish a valid argument from silence. Who should have known about the gospels and why should they have written about them and didn't? We have stuff-all Christian writings dating between the writing of the Gospels in the later quarter of the first century and the early-mid 2nd century of which you speak. A few letters, and that's about it. Refering to the 4-point argument, if X = people in general, then you're breaking premise 3 here.
• The Gospels are not Numbered until c.172
• The Gospels are not Named until c.185
  =&gt; You are erroneously confusing the actual occurance of an event, with our earliest surviving record of that event. They are not the same thing, especially given the sparsity of surviving records.
• The Gospels are full of midrash and myth
  =&gt; A completely unproven assertion.
• The Gospels are wildly at variance with each other
  =&gt; The Gospels all depict the same major events in the life of Jesus. All agree he was a historical human being. All agree he was a religious teacher. All agree he was baptised by John. All agree he performed miracles. All agree he preached against the Pharisees. All agree there was a Last Supper. All agree he was put to death by Crucifixion by Pilate at the bidding of the Jewish Leaders. I wouldn't describe that as "widly at variance".
• There were many other Gospels, all different
  =&gt; Good for them.

The gospels are not purely miraculous accounts but include what appears to be a historical narrative. Historians do not dismiss accounts because they contain miracles, they rather ignore the miraculous parts and concentrate on the rest. There is no reason to think the historical narratives in the gospels are meant to be anything other than historical. And since the multiple sources in the Gospels mean many events depicted have multiple attestation, there is an increased reason to believe the events as historical.

I'll grant that Paul is ambiguous and that he could possibly be meaning either. Even so the argument from silence fails on this ground.

About Paul's reference to the Last Supper, you say.

• It's DIFFERENT to the Gospel versions
  =&gt; Which is multiple attestation meaning it is more likely to be historical, not less.
• He provides no setting - time, place, names - he could just have easily mean in the upper realms
  =&gt; It provides the setting of "on the night he was betrayed". To me "night" and "betrayed" implies living on earth, and the fact that physical bread and wine is supposed to be representative of his body and blood suggests his body is also supposed to be physical.
  Even if I grant that it ambiguous, the argument from silence is still doomed as you can't say for sure that Paul didn't write about it.
• It may be an interpolation
  =&gt; Except of course that the text reads perfectly well as is and there is no reason to suspect interpolation other than wanting there to be one. Explaining away evidence like this is perhaps the most detrimental thing you can do to an argument from silence. You can't sensibly argue from a silence that only exists because you've explained away the evidence.

Which is unsuprising because he wasn't writing a history, and his readers were probably already familiar with Paul's teachings on the historical Jesus. Paul has no reason to mention any historical details. Occasionally when it's relevant he does toss in one of Jesus teachings or the Last Supper, which is exactly what we would expect if the history was true. Paul's writings break both premises 2 and 4 of an argument from silence.

Paul on the Historical Jesus:

• Jesus was "born of a women" and "born under law" (Galations 4:4)
  Both these things suggest to me a physical human birth.
• Jesus had "human nature" and was a "descendant of King David". (Romans 1:3)
  Seems as clear as can be to me.
• Paul quotes the Lord's teachings on divorce, which echo those of the Gospels. (1 Cor 7:10)
• Paul says that the Lord taught that preachers should be paid for their teachings (1 Cor 9:14)
• Paul says that the Lord taught about the end-times (1 Thes 4:15)
  The Lord taught. You said "Paul attributes his teachings to personal revelations or to God - he does NOT explicitly cites teachings or sayings to Jesus". Since "the Lord" is almost always assigned to JC in Paul's writings, I think we can ignore your "or to God" objection. That leaves us with possible "personal revelations". I'll grant it's ambiguous, but ambiguity is not silence by any stretch.
• Paul refers to James as "the Lord's brother" (Gal 1:19)
  Pretty cut and dried this one IMO. Jesus had a human brother, whos name was James. Josephus thought so. The early Church Father's thought so. The NT writers thought so.
• Paul refers to the Last Supper (1 Cor 11:23-25)
  We discussed this above.
• The Jews killed Jesus (1 Thes 2:14-16)
  Another cut and dried example. How do Jews kill a spiritual Jesus precisely?
• Jesus was physically buried. (1 Cor 15:4)
  The old favourite. Screaming "interpolation" doesn't particularly help your case either. Arguments from silence and explaining away non-silences are not a good combination.

Look, even if you can come up with explanations, interpretations and interpolations for every single one of these verses, it doesn't save your argument. Chances are, that one of these verses is original and means what it says, chances are that there's no silence to be explained.
I would suggest a good rule of thumb is to take the evidence as it is and let it suggest theories, not pick your theories and then try to force the evidence to fit.

This proves nothing. Paul sometimes used spiritual meanings? So what? So do I.


You provide a nice list of lots of names, but I will simply echo Alexis: Josephus shouldn't be on that list, and some of the others have no relevance whatsoever to Christianity - breaking premise 2 in fine style.

My emotive personal attacks are coming because you are making no argument. You seem to be trying to make an argument from silence, yet you seem to have no idea on how to go about this and have not managed to assemble an argument that is even close to valid and you are continuously breaking seriously the required premises for such an argument. I have seen a few amusingly bad arguments in my time: yet here you are advocating a radical extremist position and your "argument" such as it is seems to have more false implications and unsound premises than valid ones. Normally people get one or two steps wrong, you seem to have managed to get every single one wrong at some stage.

False. They are not written about in what writings we have from the 1st century.
To get from there to "unknown in the 1st century" is an entire two steps of logic (premises 2 & 3) which you haven't provided and can't.

Q is sufficiently preserved in GMatthew and GLuke.

I'm not the one who needs to produce the hard evidence. An argument from silence fails given the mere possibility of such a reference being true. Each one of this "could be"s pokes another hole in your already sunk boat.

I meant non-NT writings but didn't bother to say so because I thought from the context it would be clear, however on re-reading my post it doesn't seem all that clear, sorry.
Anyway, the only non-NT book on your list is 1 Clement - hence my "incredibly small" statement. I'll try again:
Yes the Gospels are not referenced in the 1st century by any of the incredibly small amount of non-NT Christian writings that survive from then,

And as we all know 1 Clement has a couple of possible quotes. And unsuprisingly you argue they aren't quotes on your website. Fine, whatever, but the mere possibility that they might be quotes is seriously damaging to your argument. This is not about how weak my argument is. My position could still be true if all these possibilities were wrong: Your argument fails if any of these possibilities are true. It is your argument vs the cumulative probabilities of these "possibilities".

Because the only documents we have from the forming years of Christianity are epistles which have <strong>NO COMPELLING REASON TO MAKE MENTION of Jesus of Nazareth or the Gospel events, but which OCCASIONALLY DO anyway</strong>.

Pervasive silences still need premises 2 & 3 to be satisfied before they become a valid argument. You don't seem to understand that you're not going to satisfy 2 because of the lack of importance placed on early Christianity by the surrounding community. 3 fails because we certainly don't have all the writings. eg Papias hints at an Aramaic Matthew, the original Q's gotten lost, we don't have all Paul's writings etc. There's probably an even larger number of documents we don't have and don't know about. And the numerous "possibilities" means premise 4 fails and we don't even have a pervasive silence to begin with. Arguing from a lack of evidence that we don't have is not a good argument!

We don't have the entire corpus of the first twenty-one documents of Christianity.

Your assumption that the Gospels are not in the first 21 documents only begs the question too. Your argument from silence on the Historical Jesus is contingent on your argument from silence on the Gospels.
Nested arguments from silence?!? Any conclusions you draw from such an argument is worthless.

When you take the premises of arguments from silence into account, it's quickly clear that Papias doesn't support you. That Papias mentions the Gospel of Mark undermines premise 4. As well it undermines a late gospel dating: if the Gospel was written during Papias' time it seems unlikely Papias would think it written by Mark the companion of Peter.

• he emphasises the importance of the Oral tradition over the written, suggesting the Gospels were new and still not fully accepted
  =&gt; Which only serves to highlight premise 2. If the Oral tradition was preferred to writing it reduces the reason for thinking people would have written about it had it been true.
• he explains that Mark was NOT an eye-witness (as do other early Fathers)
  =&gt; I know he does and they do and I did not claim he was. How is it relevant to this discussion?
• he refers to a Hebrew Matthew that is not like ours today, showing the Gospels were still in development
  =&gt; Showing that there were earlier documents which we do not have (breaking premise 3). And indicating there was an earlier document about the historical Jesus - destroying your argument from silence completely.

Again this shows your naivity. You are making the argument from silence for the Historical Jesus dependent upon an argument from silence with regards to the dates of the sources. One argument from silence alone is weak. One dependent upon the other is worthless.
Paul almost certainly mentions the historical Jesus and Josephus is generally considered not to be a forgery. Tacitus is a historian whos job it is to get things right from 80+ years after events.

I've heard of people putting their foot in their mouths but this seems like your entire leg. Have you actually read Contra Celsum? Or are you just passing on some atheistic propaganda here?
If you do ever feel inclined to do some reading of Celsus, I recommend "CELSUS On the True Doctrine - A Discourse Against the Christians" by RJ Hoffmann. It's a recreation of Celsus' original work based on the extensive quotations by Origen in Contra Celsum - so you can read Celsus' argument on its own (and you're not at the mercy of Origen's painfully slow pace) and then (if you want) go away and read Origen's reply. But the main reason I like it is the readibility of the translation.

Anyway, as Alexis has already pointed out, you are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Any questions?

Which demonstrates the great danger of taking quotes out of context, or forming an opinion of someone's position based on one quote.

Irony strikes again.

In conclusion, I can but again be astounded by your woeful inability to be able to construct a sound argument or understand the problems with arguing from silence. Well... that and be amused about Celsus. I haven't read many of your posts - is tampering with quotes a habit as Alexis suggests? Certainly reading some serious scholarship would not go astray, as I see the footnotes on your website are littered with radical extremists.

Tercel

[ June 25, 2002: Message edited by: Tercel ]</p>

Ted Hoffman

Alexius,
Its delightful to know that you can stoop down and call me an idiot. I thought you were obsessed with occupying the moral highground. Aaah, welcome to the human race.

Anyway, moving on...
You had earlier argued:

Your argument that the Romans should have mentioned Jesus has been totally debunked many times and you simply refuse to listen. Christianity was a tiny irrelevant eastern cult - NO ONE CARED!!!!!

your main response, besides the insults, was:

The Romans certainly crucified people without a care in the world and your point that we should have a record of every dead trouble maker is stupid beyond belief.

Where is the evidence for this? And who asked for Roman records?

In any case, the main thrust of your argument was that Some hostorians, notably Celsus, found the virgin birth false.

Then you claimed I created a strawman. Its clear that you have a very poor grasp of logic and I would advise you to desist from using terms you do not understand. Such terms, when employed in such a childish manner, serve to expose the hollowness of your arguments.

I asked questions. My questions exposed how impossible it could have been for NO ONE TO CARE given what the bible claims. And my argument is that for historians to have ignored all those events could have been impossible. So their silence implies they never took place.

Thats why when you said they did not happen, I agreed and underlined what Iaison has been saying : the Jesus story is a myth.

That is not a strawman. And it helps very little to call me an idiot and say the argument is stupid. Maybe if there are some kids reading this, they will think the smart guy is the one calling people idiots.
But most people here are rational adults.

Iasion

Greetings all,

Celsus
doh - I was wrong about Celsus - I forgot he does assume Jesus was historical.

But,
my main point was about the Gospels - Celsus clearly calls the virgin birth stories "fiction" based on "myth" - these comments are found in Hoffmann.

And he does this in the very period when the Gospels are coming into prominence - just after Tatian had accepted the four Gospels, but before they had been named.

This attack on the Gospels by Celsus was so damaging that the book was destroyed by the Christians.

This supports the thesis that the Gospels were late productions and recognised as fictional even when they were first circulated.


Josephus
I gave a "fairly complete list of 1st century writers" and I included Josephus.

You argued he should not be on this list - are you really claiming Josephus was NOT a 1st century writer? Clearly false.


Contemporary Writers
I gave the list of 1st century writers to show that this period was not sparsely recorded - a point you failed to address.

On my page, I DO classify these writers according to how likely they would be to mention Jesus or the Gospel events:<a href="http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/EarlyWriters.html" target="_blank">Early Writers</a>

This period was fairly well recorded - it is simply not correct to excuse the lack of mention of Jesus of Nazareth to a "lack of documents"

The fact that Justus of Tiberias and Philo fail to mention a historical Jesus clearly argues that there was NO such person.


No Christian mention
You still seem to be claiming that the lack of clear Christian mention to historical details of Jesus of Nazareth is due to the "tiny number of documents".

I pointed out that the entire corpus of the first twenty-one documents of Christianity can hardly be called a "tiny number" - and all of these first century or more of Christian writings have no clear evidence for a historical Jesus - another point you fail to address.


Argument from Silence
You claim that early Christian writers have no need to give details about Jesus because they are already known.

There is no evidence for this at all - it is merely an assumption you have to make to support your opinion.

In fact YOU are arguing from silence.

Based on the silence on the early Christians about a historical Jesus, you argue that they already know from documents we DON'T have

This is the weakest possible sort of argument - your case rests on what YOU CLAIM the documents we don't have must have contained, based on the silence of the early Christians.

If the argument from silence is so weak, why do you use it?

The actual evidence we DO have supports the exact opposite view - FULLY TWENTY-ONE documents - the entire corpus of 1st century Christian writings, plus some early 2nd century - have no clear mention of a historical Jesus.

Your case rests on pleading these are a "tiny number" of documents, and that all the historical details are in documents that all got lost - it just doesn't hold water.


Quentin David Jones

Peter Kirby

Tercel writes: Tacitus is a historian whos job it is to get things right from 80+ years after events.

No, Tacitus was a senator who wrote history in his spare time.

Iasion writes: This attack on the Gospels by Celsus was so damaging that the book was destroyed by the Christians.

All heretical works were destroyed, independently of whether or not they were cogently argued.

best,
Peter Kirby