Granny Magda in Message 415 writes:
And what draws someone to studying Jesus? Disbelief that he ever lived? Perhaps for a very few. The vast, vast majority of Jesus scholars began their studies already believing he was real.
This doesn't explain why non-Christian scholars are of the same opinion. Someone like Ehrman, he's a tenured professor and best selling author. He's in a position to say what the hell he likes. If he decided that the evidence supported mythicism he could say so and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. He is a prominent example of someone who has thrown off his Christian biases in dozens of respects. He started out as a believing Christian remember. He had complete faith in the accuracy and consistency of the Bible. He got past that. I don't see why scholars like him would have any special trouble in circumnavigating this particular bias.
I'm not following your argument. I said most Jesus scholars began their studies already believing he was real, and you respond that Ehrman began that way but got past that. How does still believing Jesus was real constitute in any way getting past that?
Look, if you don't think this is an important discussion, you're free to not engage with it. Personally, I think it's interesting.
I do find the discussion interesting, but I don't think it particularly important whether Jesus was based upon an obscure mystic or upon nothing at all.
I expect that anyone deserving of the title of scholar would say "I don't know" when they have no evidence
But that's not the case. No matter how many times it is repeated, the charge of "no evidence" is false. The Epistles are evidence. The Gospels are evidence. Acts is evidence. Tacitus is evidence. Jospehus is evidence.
My position is that the Christ of faith wasn't real, that there is no evidence that he ever existed, and that it doesn't matter if he was based upon a person who was nothing like him and did none of the things described in the gospels. Conservative Jesus scholars think the Christ of faith was the historical Jesus. More liberal scholars think they see a human historical Jesus. As I said earlier, there's a huge chasm in thought and certainly no consensus among Jesus scholars about the historical Jesus.
When there is unanimity about the historicity of Jesus in the absence of any evidence,
There isn't. There is evidence.
When I say that there is no evidence for a historical Jesus I mean the kind of cross-confirming corroboration from multiple sources that historians seek.
But conclusions shouldn't be drawn simply because of our great inner need for answers.
No but a hypothesis with greater explanatory power is to be preferred over one with less explanatory power.
Great explanatory power is seductive. It can cause acceptance of a hypothesis that exceeds the evidence.
I'm repeating myself, but the dissatisfaction with being left to wonder cannot create evidence that doesn't exist.
And I'm repeating myself when I point out that evidence does exist.
If the evidence exists then why talk about resolving the dissatisfaction with being left to wonder?
The reasons for thinking Jesus real are the words of Paul and Josephus (sorry, Tacitus), but I don't find them at all persuasive. Paul may or may not have been truthful about a Christian church in Jerusalem, but if there was then it would have had preachers, and one of them could have served as the model for Jesus. It's possible. But where's the evidence? The gospels are just made up and only describe a miraculous Jesus, so they're useless. Paul tells us almost nothing about Jesus. His Jesus is more of the spirit than of reality, "being in very nature God" (Philippians 2:6) and that sort of thing.
Just because some scholars hold errant beliefs does not mean that they are incapable of getting anything right and can be completely ignored.
These aren't just scholars. They're Jesus scholars and the entire field is influenced by religious mysticism.
I believe that Paul, like modern evangelists, made it up. Not just the vision of the resurrection but a whole lot more, including possibly the existence of the Christian community in Jerusalem. "Come," he would preach to a crowd, "and join your brothers in Jerusalem who have experienced the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who having suffered the cross rose again to be by the side of God." And what would it matter that there wasn't really any Christian community a 10 days journey away on foot in Jerusalem.
That would work if Rome and Jerusalem were completely isolated, but that isn't the case.
It would take at least a couple months to walk from Rome to Jerusalem. I was thinking of nearby places like Antioch, which is maybe a 10 day walk from Jerusalem.
The people Paul was writing to would have been in a position to catch Paul in the lie if he were fabricating such a visible entity as the Jerusalem church (of which we have independent attestation in Josephus and elsewhere).
And Paul might have responded like this:
Possible Paul response:
"As I live and breath, it is not me that is lying but they, all while denying our Lord Jesus Christ. Cast them out!"
People don't care about evidence. They believe what appeals to them, and obviously Paul appealed to a lot of people. That a third of the country believes Trump won the 2020 election is a testament to the power of charisma over evidence.
The opening passages of Galatians clearly imply that whoever Paul is writing to has already been in touch with that church.
In touch with the Jerusalem church? The Galatians? Where does it say that? All I get out of it is that Paul had competition.
Paul doesn't like what they had to say about him, so he's putting the record straight (as he sees it). That context makes clear that a Christian community existed by the time of the Epistles.
Don't get that out of Galatians, either.
If there isn't a wider Christian community, who the hell is he writing to?
I imagine a sparsely scattered community of churches convinced by or even founded by Paul and that he was writing to Christian communities in Galatia, Corinthia, Philippi, etc.
And the differences Paul had with the Jerusalem church? What is a protagonist without an antagonist? Paul was a fabricator, a teller of tales. He could craft a story.
He sure could. But I don't think that persuasive power would have been enough to convince people of a contemporaneous church which did not exist. I think that's far-fetched.
Again, Trump.
It looks more like rivalry than real enmity to me.
Seems a little bit more than that to me ("If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!" Galatians 1:9), but okay, rivalry, sure.
Biblical scholars have been enveloped in the mist of mystical writings for so long that they've lost all sense of judgment about what constitutes true evidence
Easy to say, hard to demonstrate.
The onus isn't upon me to prove it false. It is upon the claimant to show it true.
All it means is that it's possible or believable. Only if we find actual cross-confirming evidence might it rise to the level of something that is likely true.
We have evidence. Tacitus and Josephus for starters.
Tacitus and Josephus are both just passing on information they've gathered from other sources, and they're both writing at least 60 years after Jesus supposedly died. And Josephus places the death of James around 62 AD, long after Paul had begun evangelizing about Jesus. And the part where he says "who was called Christ"? Really? Christ is a Greek word, not Aramaic or Hebrew? Would they really have called Jesus "Christ" in Jerusalem? But Paul, he had those churches in Greece.
Biblical scholarship does remind me of creationists who want special dispensations for their "evidence".
I see no special dispensations. Documentary evidence is accepted as evidence in historical studies. Documentary evidence is not only accepted in textual criticism, it is the entire focus of the field. I have no idea how textual critics in particular are supposed to spend their time if documentary evidence is off the table.
Calling the NT and derivative sources "documentary evidence" is a long stretch.
As for the comparison to creationism, I could talk about the various ways in which zealous internet mythicists remind me of creationists, but I think that's a rather fruitless endeavor.
I think the term mythicists is misapplied. Those who accept the Christ of faith are the mythicists, accepting the myths presented in the gospels as truths. Those who somehow find a Jesus of history are the believers, and those who doubt Jesus ever existed are the agnostics.
--Percy
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