Reconstructing the Historical Jesus

Arriving at the best picture of the past we can develop with what evidence is currently available to us.That's a project I'd like to see historical Jesus defenders get on board with. Instead they insist on violating Indiana Jones' most important precept: "we cannot afford to take mythology at face value."

Except for when it comes to the historical existence of Jesus. Then, all of a sudden, myths are taken completely at face value and bias is assumed not to be present.How else to explain the recurring fact that the source of the claims for the existence of Jesus - the Gospels - has several times been put forth as evidence of those claims? Not present in the case of the historicity of Jesus. What we have is one source that claims the existence of Jesus, and then several sources that repeat the claim of the first source. This is identical to the state of "multiple attestation" for documents about Jesus Malverde and John Frum, also mythical figures. Agreed. And there are no "independent witnesses" that report the existence of Jesus. Not a single one! The Gospels simply claim that the ministry of Jesus was witnessed. That's not at all the same thing. That's a claim for which there is no evidence and would be entirely trivial to fabricate. It's the easiest thing in the world to say "oh, a hundred people must have seen me at the mall yesterday". That, unfortunately, is not even a single example of a real eyewitness. A good liar knows this and learns to embarrass himself as part of the lie. I learned this in third grade when I learned to fabricate B's instead of A+'s. If I could know how to exploit the "doctrine of embarrassment" at the age of eight, then it's reasonable to assume that adult mythmakers in the first century knew how, too. The problem is, there's nothing to be coherent with. All we have of Jesus is a single cluster of interdependent sources making claims, and then others repeating those claims at face value. There's no "coherence" argument that defends the historicity of Jesus, there's only post-hoc explanations that cram a contorted historical Jesus into the diminishing hole left for him in history's documentary lacunas.The historical Jesus model is little more than the kind of alternate or secret history story where (for instance) a writer exploits Agatha Christie's unexplained three-day absence to conclude that she battled enormous alien insects in early 20th century England and then had her memory wiped by Doctor Who. It's not an attempt to seek historical truth. It's an attempt to take Christianity at face value while not running afoul of the real historical record. It's an attempt to exploit historical ignorance and craft post-hoc explanations for how a man could be the seed of a major world religion and yet leave no other mark on history whatsoever. When these criteria are employed nothing emerges at all. Because that's what there is to "historical Jesus" - absolutely nothing.

'Fraid so. I've never claimed that it is. But the fact that the Qu'ran exists and claims the existence of Mohammed isn't evidence for the existence of Mohammed, no more than a post of me claiming that Claudia Schiffer is standing in my kitchen is evidence that Claudia Schiffer is standing in my kitchen.Invariably the "evidence" for Christ is nothing more than taking the claims of the Gospels at least partially at face value, and offering the claims of the Gospels as evidence for themselves. You did it, Modulus. When asked what the evidence for the existence of Jesus was, you replied:

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The five Gospels and Paul.

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I mean, did that not happen? (By my count it happened twice.) But the "Gospels and Paul" can't be evidence for the claim that Jesus existed because the "Gospels and Paul" are the claim that Jesus existed. Absent the first gospel there's none of the others. Absent the Gospels, there's no Paul. And absent the Gospels and Paul there's nobody claiming the existence of Jesus Christ.A claim can't support itself (except trivially, when the claim is "I am making a claim.") That's an incredibly basic point of evidence that Historical Jesus proponents like yourself have repeatedly attempted to turn on its head. They disagree on the basis of no evidence, as I've demonstrated. Then you've made a trivial claim. Perhaps the difference is merely a 1% difference in likelihood of veracity between embarrassing claims and self-gratifying claims. In that case the principle of embarrassment is no guide at all to what is most likely true or false, since we're not comparing an embarrassing claim with a non-embarrassing claim. We're comparing mythical Jesus to historical Jesus. (Or, more accurately - mostly mythical Jesus to all mythical Jesus.)

No, I'm asking a single question, and it's the same question I've been asking throughout: The Gospels and Paul make a claim that a person called Jesus existed. What evidence exists to support this claim?So far the answer has been "the Gospels and Paul", but that's clearly circular. A claim can't be self-supporting (unless, trivially, the claim is "I am making a claim.") Sources of invention, clearly. Which you failed to do, because my assertion is accurate. It's right there in the context of Tacitus:

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"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures upon a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from who the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius, at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate. And a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out, not only in Judea, the source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

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Tacitus is explaining who the Christians are, why they are so named, and why Nero inflicts the "exquisite tortures" upon them. He's not actually referring to any independent knowledge of "Christus", not any more than the guy who wrote the Netflix summary for "Star Wars" is independently corroborating the existence of Darth Vader. As you've so patiently explained, the supposed "Historical Jesus" wasn't known as Christ. We know he's not referring to anything but the legend of Christ he's apparently heard either from Christians themselves, or those who knew about the movement. I didn't, because you are wrong about Tacitus, as I've just explained. The argument from silence. If there really had been a genuine person to hang the Jesus stories onto, we'd have independent, corroborating evidence of someone existing and doing things that are like what Jesus is supposed to have done. If the supposed "Historical Jesus" didn't do anything like that, then he's by definition not the Historical Jesus any more than the "Historical Santa Claus" is a guy in New Jersey who doesn't make toys, has never been to the North Pole, is a clean-shaven 30-year-old man named "Lou."By definition the "historical Jesus" can only be the Historical Jesus if he actually was the basis for the Jesus legends. If the figure you're fingering as the "historical Jesus" didn't actually do any Jesus-stuff then by definition he can't be the "historical Jesus", because he can't have intelligibly been the basis for any of the legends. Yes. But that doesn't mean that a historical Jesus had to start it, no more than a historic Jesus Malverde had to start the Jesus Malverde cult. It's possible to start a cult based on veneration of someone besides yourself. Indeed, it's happened several times in the past century, as I've documented.

Relevance? This topic is about Jesus, not Mohammed. But this is circular. It's like if I wrote a post claiming that Claudia Schiffer was standing in my kitchen, and then several people quoted the claim as part of a post asking for evidence in support, like so:

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crashfrog writes:

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Claudia Schiffer is standing in my kitchen OMG!

What is the evidence for this claim?

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And then I came back saying "well, the evidence for the existence of Claudia Schiffer standing in my kitchen is in a small number of documents, mostly posts on EvC Forum referring to Claudia Schiffer standing in my kitchen." Claims can't be "self-evidenced" with the trivial exception of the claim "I am making a claim." That is, of course, not the claim under discussion. The claim under discussion is the claims of Paul (the Bible writer) and the Gospels about the existence and life of Jesus.Take it this way. You don't, for instance, take the claims of the Gospel and Paul about the resurrection at face value, even though they're in unanimous agreement that it happened. Regardless of its appearance in multiple "separate" Gospels and the work of Paul, you take it as a single claim that is supported by no evidence.Why not treat the existence of Jesus that way, as well? Why are the Gospels a single uncorroborated source when the subject is the resurrection, but a nexus of multiple independent corroborating sources when the subject is the existence of Jesus? It can't be both simultaneously. If the Gospels are evidence of the existence of Jesus then, as the fundamentalists believe, they're also evidence of the resurrection. Ergo, the flaw in your historicism is made apparent. Is the evidence for Santa Claus the claim (by 7-year-olds) that Santa Claus exists?Do you understand that you're turning the regular rules of evidence on its head by taking claims at face value?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Historicists aren't unilaterally tasked with defining words. "Historical Jesus", by definition, has to mean someone who actually existed and was the figure on which the Jesus mythology came to be based.But a figure who did absolutely nothing that would have brought him to the attention of mythmakers as someone on which to base mythology by definition can't have been the basis for the mythology. The myths of Santa Claus, by definition, aren't based on a clean-shaven 30-year-old New Jersey web designer who hates kids and is named "Lou." That's true by definition because Lou, we've determined, has done absolutely nothing in his life that would lead someone to base the myth of Santa Claus on him.We have to be able to draw a connection between the activities of a fictional character and the activities of a real person in order to say that the fictional character is based on the real person. We can't just stipulate or assume it; if the historical individual doesn't bring something to the table, then there was no reason for the mythmaker to base any part of the myth on the historical individual. And then in what sense could the historic person be the basis for the myth? No, it's not. It's never ridiculous to ask what evidence supports a claim. That's the basis of rationality, a practice which you have apparently abandoned. Yes! They should be ignored because they are utterly untrustworthy, mutually plagaristic, cannot corroborate themselves, were written long decades after the events they supposedly chronicle, and are full of impossible invention and embellishment. The Gospels are the testimony of liars. All of this was covered more than a hundred posts ago, you know, when you thought this whole topic was beneath "reasonable people."

Recourse to unknown sources doesn't present any evidence for the existence of Jesus.And I've asked no question about sources; I'm asking a question about what evidence there is that supports the Gospel and Paul's claim of the evidence of Jesus. You offered the unknown "Q" source as part of that, but surely it's the stupidest thing in the world to present as "evidence" something you, by definition, can't know anything about. It's like saying that the answers to your questions can be found in a book orbiting Alpha Centauri. What does it say, specifically? I have no idea, you'll have to go and read it! I'm not required to present any evidence, since I'm arguing the more parsimonious claim. Individuals that appear in fiction are assumed to be fictitious until evidence is presented of their existence. To do otherwise is simply to take claims at face value, as though one were a credulous idiot.But as it happens I've presented abundant evidence. You've simply not seen fit to grapple with any of it. Not any more than the Netflix movie summary writer refers to Darth Vader as a historical person. The context is clear that Tacitus is simply explaining the beliefs of Christians - not independently corroborating the existence of "Christus." How would he possibly have been able to do that, anyway? 30 years and hundreds of miles from where Jesus supposedly lived?It's precisely because we know that Tacitus was a skeptical and not especially credulous person that we know that he's not referring to Jesus as a real historical person but merely as an element of Christian belief. Just as we assume that the Netflix movie summarizer, presumably being someone who has not taken all leave of his senses, does not intend to independently corroborate the existence of Darth Vader in a galaxy far, far away. I've dropped nothing. Your claim has been rebutted, and even if it had not - you've already admitted that there's evidence as well that the Josephus material is a forgery. So it's doubly irrelevant to the case for the historical Jesus. I'm merely ignoring your repetition of unevidenced, rebutted claims. That is the case, Paulk. It's just been made to you. You already have what? A "historical Jesus" that isn't the historical Jesus?Then what on Earth are we arguing about, if you're already a proponent of the nonexistence of the historical Jesus? What on Earth are you on about, here? Where have I ever questioned that Christianity exists?You're clearly having a jolly time arguing with somebody, Paul, I just wish it was with me and my arguments. This makes no sense. You keep making this claim but it's unintelligible. What "stories about their origins"? You've already agreed that the Christian story of Christian origins is a complete fiction - Jesus didn't rise from the dead, Jesus didn't do any miracles, Jesus didn't give the Sermon on the Mount, etc. So we already know for a fact that Christians have buried their true origin story under a mountain of fiction. Why is this a claim that, uniquely, I have to provide evidence for, when you already accept it to be true? Or do you? Oh - so, your contention is not just the Historical Jesus, it's the historicity of the Gospels in every respect. You believe that Jesus actually did rise from the dead, feed the multitudes with loaves and fishes, deliver the Sermon on the Mount, and so on.

The earliest date given for the authorship of Mark is 50 AD, and the date given for the authorship of the Pauline epistles is 51 AD. Matthew and Luke plagiarize Mark and John plagarizes the rest. First Thessalonians refers to Luke, so it can't be younger than Luke.The dating of these books, frankly, is a mess, given how they were later edited and altered. There's literally nothing that can give us any confidence that the books of the Bible are accurately reporting any real history; they corrupt everything they touch. Anything with a connection to the Bible must be disregarded absent some kind of real evidence.

Well, you did, when you signed on to defend the notion of a historical Jesus who didn't do anything "Jesus-y." Total non sequitor, so I'll repeat the point: It's never ridiculous to ask what evidence supports a claim. Another often-repeated lie by the Historical Jesus side: "every source is as bad as the Bible." But frankly that's just not true. For instance the Magna Carta isn't

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utterly untrustworthy, mutually plagaristic, cannot corroborate themselves, were written long decades after the events they supposedly chronicle, and are full of impossible invention and embellishment.

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Neither is the US Constitution, the Code of Hammurabi, or Plutarch's Histories. Those are just examples: many historical documents are well-sourced and documentary, and the mundane claims they make can be taken more or less at face value, especially where they describe events that other independent sources also describe.That's just not the case with the Gospels and the Pauline epistles. If the Gospels and Paul are the only source of knowledge you have about Jesus then you know absolutely nothing at all, because they're the testimony of liars.

Documented fact. By which of course you mean "scholars who believe in the existence of a historical Jesus Christ." For real scholars who follow evidence there's evidence, apparently, for an authorship of Mark at least as early as 50 AD. What evidence?

But the problem is just that - "Q" doesn't exist. You can't put forward sources that don't exist as "independent support" for your claims.Here's a hint, Paul - when you're making up sources that would conveniently corroborate your claims if they existed you're not actually providing support for your claims - you're engaged in patent nonsense.Do you expect me to be convinced by a source that doesn't exist? Honestly? Which I've done. The more parsimonious claim is the one that assumes the existence of the least number of entities the existence of which is not required. Since the "Mythical Jesus" position has one less unnecessary entity, it's the more parsimonious of the claims. QED. The records you previously claimed didn't exist? How did Tacitus have access to them if they didn't exist, and if he did refer to records, why didn't he say that? Again, your recourse is to imaginary sources. How can you expect that to be convincing? Why are you putting forward arguments that you don't believe? Can we put this line of argumentation to bed, then, since I don't believe it either? Isn't it the obligation of Tacitus defenders to put forward some kind of evidence that Tacitus actually saw some records of the crucifixion of Jesus? And if they can't meet that obligation don't we have the right not to believe them, and consider their claims of Tacitus having unique and direct evidence of the existence and crucifixion of Jesus to be unfounded? And if they're unfounded, how can Tacitus be support for the existence of Jesus? Except that it does, as I've demonstrated. The context is quite clear. Do you need it quoted again? So, not written by Josephus but put forward as though he did.That's the precise definition of a "forgery." Yes - that it's reasonable to expect some actual evidence if Jesus actually existed. Not imaginary evidence from imaginary sources, which is all you've been able to provide. No. Wrong. What we need to work out is whether there is any actual evidence that such a person existed and was the basis of the Jesus mythology. And where did I ever indicate that I considered it "extraordinary" that Christianity existed? Please be specific. Yes, but you misunderstand the term "fiction." I don't mean to imply that the authors of the Gospels were the authors of the fiction - they were merely its recorders. Similarly, if I dictate a fiction story to someone who, for whatever reason, believes it and writes it down, the story they've written - that they're the "author" of - is a complete fiction, but they're not fiction authors. And how would the Gospels be based on such an individual? Please be specific. But again, you're not making any sense. What story was "replaced"? If there was no historical Jesus then there was no real origin Christianity to "replace." So what could possibly have been replaced?Your claim is utterly without sense, here. Please continue to elaborate so I can understand it. I would go so far as to say that it's a certainty that exaggeration and embellishment occurred. Ergo, it's most likely to assume that the exaggeration and embellishment parts go so far as to include his actual existence. Once you're lying about nearly everything, why not lie about the rest?

I'm aware of how historians investigate ancient figures, and the way they do it most definitely not by taking the self-serving claims of holy books at credulous face value. No, there's not. There's a pile of claims of Jesus's existence. And the best evidence you seem to have for the veracity of those claims is "why would first-century mythmakers lie"? Pardon me if I'm not as credulous. But nothing written about Jesus was written at or around the time of his existence. It was all written decades after he supposedly existed.Placing a fictional character in the near past? A common technique in mythmaking. It lends verisimilitude. But it indicates that the figure under discussion is a myth, not a historical person. That's why Jesus stories and myths were able to spread so rapidly - they weren't tied down to people's actual memories of the events surrounding a real person.The pattern of writings about Jesus is clear to anyone who's made a study of mythology and mythmaking, as I have. Topologically it's identical to other examples of mythological figure invention that spread by word of mouth, such as Jesus Malverde and John Frum. Ergo it's most reasonable to assume that, like Jesus Malverde and John Frum, Jesus was a mythological invention, not a mythological inspiration. But again the existence of men executed by Romans don't lend credence to the Jesus mythology, they merely lend verisimilitude. After all, none of those men wound up being the central focus of a major world religion. That's a bit more extraordinary than just "getting killed by Romans" and it creates a greater burden of evidence.It's insufficient just to demonstrate that the Romans killed a guy named "Josh." You have to provide evidence that demonstrates that the Romans killed a guy named "Josh" (you know what I mean) and that someone based a major world religion on him. And what evidence to Geza Vermes, Paula Fredriksen, Bart Ehrman, and Ernest Renan offer for the historical existence of Jesus? Please be specific. You've missed the point completely. If first century authors can make self-evident claims, why can't modern children?

And why couldn't his existence be one of the first elements to grow in the telling?

Then whoever this "Historical Jesus" is supposed to be, in what possible sense is Christianity based on him?How can your individual be the "Historical Jesus" if he's not in any way the basis for the Jesus mythology? What's the likelihood, for instance, that Santa Claus is based on a 30-year-old clean-shaven man who hates kids, doesn't make toys, and is named "Lou"?If your Historical Jesus wasn't Jesus-y enough to be the basis for Christianity then how can he be the Historical Jesus?

So what's the evidence for this "reconstructed Q", and what does it say about Jesus independent of the Gospels? I never claimed that they never existed. I simply claim that you can't use sources about which almost nothing can be known as evidence for your position, for the very simple reason that as "evidence" you can state that it very conveniently states whatever you need it to state, and I can't inspect it to judge whether that's the case. Don't get ahead of yourself, Paul. You've yet to demonstrate anything about the supposed "Q source", least of which that it lends any support at all to your position or that it even ever existed. This is nonsensical, just another example of how defending the Historical Jesus requires someone to take all leave of their senses. How are they relevant if they're not to be believed? How is a wrong argument at all relevant? How does it defend anything? How does it lend support to any conclusion?It doesn't, which is why I'm amazed you brought it forward. Am I now supposed to take the role of both sides, and defend your arguments, as well? Sorry, but I decline. It's clear to me which side has the lock of rational skepticism and which side is about taking ancient religious texts at credulous face value, relying on imaginary evidence, and substituting invective for argument: yours. Obviously people have talked about Jesus outside of the Bible. So that's another claim that you've utterly misrepresented.My contention is that there are no independent references to Jesus; there are merely references by people taking Christian claims at face value. Tacitus is one such reference, as I've abundantly demonstrated. Yes, there is - the fact that he's referring to the state of Christian belief. Just as someone summarizing Star Wars refers to Darth Vader, but we know that he doesn't believe in the existence of a real Darth Vader. An "accident"? How does that work, exactly? Regardless, I'm prepared to accept that the forgery was accidental. But plenty of people did not become the central figure of a major world religion. That makes it rather different.Any attempt you make to argue that the Historical Jesus was "just folks", just a regular dude, nobody that anybody paid any particular attention to, undercuts your case that he actually was the Historical Jesus. Because if he was "just folks" then why would anybody bother to make him the central figure of a religion? It makes no sense. No, incorrect. The Gospels and Paul are a claim that there was such a person. What is the evidence that supports that claim? Right, but why would anybody know that story? The early Christians would have believed that they were following someone who had actually lived, so the fact that Christianity had been started based on a figure that didn't exist would have been unknown to Christians, so who would possibly have written it down? There's nothing to be replaced.The people who worship Jesus Malverde and John Frum, in the present day, are unaware that these are mythical figures. To them they're as real as they come and the "real" origin is identical to their mythical origin. Certainly nobody in the faith has recorded any story about how a guy made up John Frum or Jesus Malverde, so there's no "true origin" that came to be replaced by a mythical origin; there's only the mythical origin that faith adherents promote, and the unknown "they were lied to" origin that nobody - not least of which the liar - would ever have bothered committing to paper. Why would they? They were trying to get people to believe a lie!Do you just not understand how lying works, Paulk? I'm surprised - you've done quite a bit of it in this thread. Don't be retarded. That's not at all what we're talking about. We're talking about the proven fact that it's a lot easier to embellish and glorify a fictitious individual who supposedly lived a while back somewhere over there - distant enough in the First Century to be beyond all capacity for fact-checking by the local audience - than it would be to embellish and glorify a real man with feet of clay. Stores always spread faster and have greater verisimilitude when they're decoupled from real people but coupled to a real place and time; that's why your cousin's campfire stories always claim they happened to a friend of his friend, not to himself, but not that they happened in a galaxy far, far away. So too might the origin of Jesus! It's just as reasonable that the first Jesus storyteller thought he was remembering something that happened and embellishing it. The best storytellers start by convincing themselves. Frankly, it's yet another obstacle to the "Historical Jesus" position - I think it overestimates the degree to which people of the First Century could have remembered anything well enough for the Christianity of the Gospels to truly be based on any actual events.