Grog

Yep. I sort of imagined him with a smaller nose and an AK-47.

mountainman

History is about possibilities and their boundaries and/or restrictions. The problem with this diagram is the claim that if we have no evidence THEN it is not historical. The lack of evidence does not necessarily imply non historicity.(eg: the evidence may have been destroyed, and/or it may be discovered or found tomorrow). Of course, lack of evidence also may imply non historicity, but this equivalence is not guaranteed (see examples provided, and their antitheses). An example of this would be the question as to whether the Nag Hammadi Codices could have been deemed to be "historical/real" prior to the manuscript discovery.

When this possibility is coded for in your diagram there is an equivalence between "real" and "historical", and between "not real" and "not historical".

In studies of history, as distinct from philosophy, real essentially translated to "historical reality".





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

aa5874

Lack of evidence of history is fundamental to an argument for no history--no reality.

Are you not arguing that there was NO Jesus cult until the 4th century because of a lack of evidence or by not accepting the evidence?

One cannot reconstruct the past by speculating and hoping that unknown evidence will magically appear from nowhere tomorrow that will ONLY corroborate one's personal imagination.

History is a reconstruction of the past using the present available data.

When new data is found the more we may be able to get a better 'picture' of the past.

At the present moment, the data we have now, supports the argument that there was NO real historical Jesus.

In other words, the Historical Jesus is a Myth.

MrMacSon

I'd say History is about possibilities probabilities
.

Steve Weiss

Even a high probability is not the equivalent of a truth. It may be necessary but is insufficient.

MrMacSon

I agree, but probability seems an apt lens through which to evaluate the vagaries of ancient history

ficino

WHAT??!! The article you link, Grog, says this: "Two key factors could not be determined from the skull—Jesus's hair and coloration. To fill in these parts of the picture, Neave's team turned to drawings found at various archeological sites, dated to the first century. Drawn before the Bible was compiled, they held crucial clues that enabled the researchers to determine that Jesus had dark rather than light-colored eyes. They also pointed out that in keeping with Jewish tradition, he was bearded as well."

Are these drawings purporting to represent JESUS or are they merely drawings of some people from the first century CE? I had not heard that graphic representations identifiable as portraits of Jesus existed from such an early date.

spin

There are different meanings to the word "historical". That's how this discussion got started in the "Criterion of Embarrassment" thread. Wright's first, wide, definition, the one most people use unthinkingly, is rather unhelpful, being about the what of the past and not the how you know what. The second that he gives is rather po-mo (post-modern) and beyond what the focus is in this discussion.

McKnight is considering the manipulation of historical "facts" into the act of telling the "historian's story of the past". But the determination of historical facts is what we are interested in. What are the facts that we can use about the past, such that we can establish an alleged historical Jesus? That determination is where we are at: the use of evidence from the past to establish facts about the past... well, one fact, ie the existence of the Jesus behind the gospel figure. It seems to me that McKnight has somehow decided that Jesus is a past reality, though I don't know how he has decided. He just has difficulties telling the story of his historical Jesus.

I use "historical" to mean "based on facts about the past determined by mustering evidence from the time". Or, "historical" is the result of mustering evidence that demonstrate facts about the past. The existence of Jesus would be a fact about the past. This should be at the beginning of McKnight's efforts. Does he ever show the mustered evidence for the existence of Jesus?

How you know a fact about the past is the basis of the job of history.

ficino

Thanks for bringing this thread back to the OP, Spin; I had veered off it myself. You may be amused that in the article I've basically finished on Socrates' unusual oaths, I changed "historical Socrates" in two or three places to "flesh-and-blood Socrates." I didn't use "real Socrates" because I thought readers will need too much background. some literary critics talk about the "flesh-and-blood author" as distinct from constructs like "implied author," so I adapted their language.

From the above it should be clear that I'm persuaded by you that we should be careful how we talk about the "historical so-and-so" and should delimit the scope of that adjective. The question will percolate in my brain for a while longer before, no doubt, getting dislodged by something else, but so far, I think I see three ways in which people talk about, say, the "historical Jesus."
1. = your "real Jesus" - fairly common parlance, even in published work
2. your sense, i.e. the subject of a limited number of predications, each of which must be established as likely by methods of historical research
3. what I think is McKnight's and others' more "po-mo" def (I agree with you here), by which the "historical Jesus" is a figure of a narrative or interpretive portrait constructed by a historian. In this sense, "historical" connotes not only that about which some facts can be asserted, but that about which an interpretation has been constructed, using the facts. The interpretation purports to give meaning to the facts. It seems to me that in this third sense, it's not enough to say "the historical jesus was crucified by the Romans in the first century CE in Palestine" (I am NOT claiming that the latter is a true statement!). You have to go on to draw out the significance of his being crucified (e.g. Reza Aslan).

There are things about this third sense that I like, and I'm not ready yet to dismiss it. After all, if we say "Joe Hill went down in history," we mean there is some story about him and we think it's true.

I don't think I'll read more of McKnight, at least right now.

cheers, F

mountainman

Well of course I'd have to agree with this, seeing that probability theory is a mathematical system of dealing with various possibilities.

In fact I'd go so far to argue that - in the long run (i.e. using probability equations [with intermediate steps] in order to model historical possibilities) - it may be that the concept of negative probabilities is required. This concept of negative probability has been raised and examined by physicists. A good article is here:

Negative Probabilities

I have mentioned this in order to deal with positive and negative "historicity" where, for example, positive historicity may be attributed to a genuine archaeological relic while a "negative historicity" may be attributed to a forged and utterly inauthentic relic.

People may not necessarily agree with this, but the method has the advantage of reserving a special treatment for forgeries, which cannot be allocated positive historicity and which, if zero historicity is allocated, the accounting of forgery is lost to the process.

It is my considered opinion that the full story of Jesus and Christian origins cannot be described without the plain and simple existence of many many forgeries.



εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia