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Author | Topic: Did Jesus Exist? by Bart Ehrman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: All the people denying that the evidence exists.
quote: I know for a fact that there is evidence. The Gospels, Paul’s identification of James as Jesus’ brother. the second reference in Josephus all exist.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9489 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined:
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That is not evidence. We have no idea who wrote the gospels. The vast majority of what is written there can be shown to be untrue. The gospels do not even agree with each other. They were written decades after the events and can be shown that the latter are rewrites of the former as the politics of the believers changed. There is no external corroboration of the texts.
We have no idea of really who Paul was. He clearly states he has no knowledge of Jesus other than through revelation. He has not learned anything about Jesus from any man. Brother of Jesus may have(and based upon Paul's own writings) probably did mean the same as today. Brother of or in Christ means a follower. This term was also used for other mystery religions. If this term was used for a follower of Mithra or Dionysus then that is proof they were historical people? There is no reference to the Josephus passage until the 3rd century. Even if the line is not an interpolation, it is not evidence for a historical Jesus. It is solely evidence that Josephus heard about Jesus. Weird that an observant Jew would call someone Christ. Weird that he only got a passing reference and no other historian at that time mentions him. None.What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: I am afraid the Gospels are evidence. They are the story of Christianty’s origin as told by Christians a few decades later. While they contain predictable exaggerations and falsehoods they can’t be simply thrown out as “not evidence”. At the least we need an explanation of why that story was told (and there are interesting features which need explanation. For instance, while the authors of Matthew and Luke concoct genealogies to “show” that Jesus was of Davidic descent, Mark hints otherwise).
quote: Nevertheless James is identified as a person with authority in the Christian church and Jewish precedent should surely be more relevant than mystery religions.
quote: Josephus does not call Jesus “Christ” in that reference, only stating that Jesus was “called Christ”. And why should Jesus get more than a passing reference? Josephus history is not hugely detailed, and even according to the Gospels Jesus only lead a briefly popular movement which - in his lifetime - achieved nothing more than getting him executed. And even that popularity is likely exaggerated.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9489 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined:
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So not evidence. Evidence requires corroboration.
Joseph's is not evidence of Jesus. He is evidence people had a belief in a Jesus. No other historian mentions Jesus who followers before this time. None.What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
quote: Thank you for demonstrating just how extreme the bias is. Making nonsensical excuses to dismiss the evidence is quite sufficient.
quote: Perhaps you’d like to list the historians writing detailed accounts of events in Judea and Galilee for the years 26-37 CE.
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Percy Member Posts: 23144 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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Theodoric in Message 379 writes: So not evidence. Evidence requires corroboration. A religion's hold on the mind cannot be underestimated. While a religion is alive the claims of credibility for its source material can be very strong without regard to evidence, and its influence can extend well outside the religion. Once it is dead or at least way out of the mainstream then this fades away. No doubt the ancient Norse religion claimed great credibility for its oral and written sources while it was alive, and now it's just comic book and movie material. --Percy
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9489 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: |
They all use other sources, they do not make claims about that period without sourcing. Also, there are multiple historians that us corroborating evidence. There is no corroborating evidence for what is is Antiquities. None of these other historians of this period have any sources that are contemporary sources for Jesus. Do you truly have no clue how historical study works? The study of history is not just spouting what people have claimed. It is examining all the evidence and determining what most likely is factual. If you would bother to read what I post you would see I posted a detailed list of historians and writers of that era. Why is Philo silent on the subject, but writes of very similar religious movements of the century before?
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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PaulK Member Posts: 18047 Joined: Member Rating: 5.0
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quote: Yes I do. That’s why I can see that you don’t. But then you’re writing as an apologist, not like someone interested in the truth.
quote: And which of them wrote detailed accounts of what happened in Judea for the relevant period? That would be none, right? That list only works if you assume that the Gospels are largely accurate - it even talks about the miraculous darkness that supposedly happened at Jesus death and the fictional Star of Bethlehem. Without that assumption we lose pretty much everything, we can’t say that any of them would even probably have mentioned Jesus.
quote:Perhaps you’d like to show what Philo wrote. And consider why he wrote about those groups. That would be applying the historical method correctly.
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: |
Whoops! Mixed up which message I was replying to. I'll start again below.
On two occasions I have been asked, – "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined:
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Let's take a look at the list then.
Hector Avalos describes himself as "agnostic" with regard to a historical Jesus. Is this a list of mythicist scholars? Or are we to include everyone who's on the fence? I have to call that a bit of a sleight of hand. Richard Carrier is a kook, a poor scholar and a general embarrassment. To be honest it was the desperate convoluted arguments of Carrier that convinced me that mythicism was bunk. The idea that Carrier is a "respected scholar" is for the birds. He is respected amongst internet atheists, nowhere else. Droge I am not familiar with. I have no issue with his scholarship. From what little I could find he seems to hold any attempt to address a historical Jesus as a waste of time whether historicist or mythicst. Perhaps you can expand upon this. Raphael Lataster has a PhD, but that doesn't make him a "respected scholar". He holds no formal academic position I am aware of. Today he seems most interested in Covid denialism. Kurt Noll ( no 'k') appears to have written a single paper on the subject. His Wiki page notes "Although his article tends to support the Christ myth theory, he concludes, however, that the lack of historical accuracy in the gospels is not proof that Jesus did not exist, and ultimately, it is not important if he lived or not explaining it "is irrelevant to an understanding of the earliest social movements that evolved into the religion now called Christianity."". Another mixed bag here, a real scholar but not exactly a full throated mythicist. I've said my piece on Price and Thompson elsewhere. So again, it's a short list. It contains only a single professional scholar - Price - who is a full-throated mythicist and he is a conspiracy theorist nut. The next nearest to an actual mythicist is Lataster, an amateur and another conspiracy theorist. I don't think this is a very impressive list. Even when you list "respected scholars that do not believe in a historical Jesus" rather than "respected mythicist scholars", the list is short and contains non-professionals. I think that when you claim that there are many scholars who don't believe in a historical Jesus, an impartial observer might reasonably infer a bit more than that. I think it's a bit of a damp squib. Mutate and Survive
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: |
I was unimpressed with the list of scholars. This list is worse, way worse. I'll get to specifics in due course, but first I want to talk briefly about this form of argument, the Argument from Silence.
The basic form of this argument is that an author should have mentioned an individual/subject/whatever, but does not. For such an argument to bear any weight it must fulfill two criteria; 1) The author must have been able to comment, they must have had the relevant information available. 2) They should have mentioned it, that is to say, they are an author was in the habit of reporting such things. I don't think that any of what we're about to see amounts to that. I also think that there is a problem here with a certain type of presentism. Firstly, it is rare for our "complete works" of an author to record their entire body of work. Often we have only a percentage of their original output. It's obvious how this makes an argument from silence difficult to sustain. Another problem here is this sort of argument;
Theodoric writes: No-one refers to this passage for a millenium, even early Christians who actively sought such passages. Did they? Because I don't think that they did. Early Christians were not arguing with mythicists. They didn't address the notion that Jesus was fictional because, as far as we can tell, no-one was making that claim. They were arguing about the things that mattered to them in their own time, not seeking to refute an argument which would not emerge until the 19th century. Since mythicists like arguments form silence so much here's one; why do we have no record of anyone in the ancient world claiming that Jesus was completely made up? It's not like there aren't authors who would have relished such an idea. Tacitus springs to mind. But no, nothing. We cannot reasonably expect 1st Century to authors to address 21st Century arguments. The idea that early Christian authors would have had a special interest in sources that merely acknowledge the existence of Jesus without having further theological value is spurious and lends no weight to arguments from silence. Right then, on to the list of authors who should have mentioned Jesus!
WRITERS WHO SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED JESUS PHILO [/list] Does a single name count as a list? Oh no wait, we have another list, "writers who probably should have mentioned Jesus", as though there were any inclusions here that are certain in the first place. This is a bit of a silly distinction in my view, just as the numbered certainty ratings are silly. Even with the "probably" included, that's a list of four authors. In order presented;
Philo This is the best case here, no doubt. And it's dreadful. Philo is writing in the 1st Century alright and he's in the right area, so this looks pretty reasonable on the surface. Further inspection though shows us that any argument from silence here must be deemed a failure. For starters, most of Philo's remaining body of work is theological or philosophical in nature. There is no reason whatsoever why we should expect him to mention Jesus in any of these, unless "On Dreams", "On the Birth of Abel" or "Concerning Noah's Work as a Planter" are supposed to have reason to bring him up. As far as I know, only Flaccus and On the Embassy to Gaius deal with events of the day in any way that might give Philo cause to mention Jesus. Certainly they do not mention him, but nor do they mention any figure comparable to Jesus. Theudas was a Jewish rebel/prophet who led about 400 men to the River Jordan, promising to part its waters. This gathering was dispersed by Roman troops and many were killed, including Theudas, who was executed. Philo makes no mention of him. The so-called Egyptian Prophet led an even larger rebellion, promising that the walls of Jerusalem would fall before him and his followers. They didn't and again, the Romans took military action and slaughtered 400 of them. Philo makes no mention of this either. Philo does not mention a single one of the many High Priests of the Jewish temple from his time, almost as though he had little interest in such people. All of these people would have been much more notable in their time than Jesus, who spent most of his career in rural Galilee and only spent a brief period in Jerusalem (perhaps as little as a week) before being executed. The idea that Philo would have known about Jesus is suppositional and extremely shaky. The idea that he would have written about Jesus is completely unsubstantiated and appears to be false. This is no foundation upon which to build an argument form silence. I find this one unconvincing.
Seneca This one fails on the "would have" metric. Seneca died in 65CE, a time when Christianity was just another small Jewish sect, troublesome, but hardly important. The only reasons I have seen for supposing that Seneca should have mentioned Jesus seem to aimed at the mythic Jesus rather than any plausible figure. The argument made in the list demanding an explanation for forged letters between Seneca and Paul strikes me as unreasonable; we can't hold Seneca responsible for later Christian (mis)interpretations of his work, nor does it seem far-fetched to me that Christians would attributed forged material to him. They don't seem to have needed much encouragement to forge documents. I don't really see the objection here. Seneca's failure to mention Jesus may have seemed shocking to early Christians who thought that Jesus was a super big deal during his life, but it should come as no surprise to us. I don't think we can build a valid argument from silence here.
Plutarch Plutarch's most notable work is Parallel Lives, a work of biography about prominent Greek and Roman figures. That clearly does not include Jesus. Plutarch's Morialia is a better bet, since it is a collection of works on a variety of topics, but even this feels like a stretch. Much of that Moralia covers topics where Jesus would be irrelevant, unless "a humorous dialogue between Homer's Odysseus and one of Circe's enchanted pigs" is supposed to mention him. Exactly where is Plutarch supposed to mention Jesus? Where is there material in Plutarch that specifically seems like it should mention Jesus? As far as I can tell, he didn't have any real interest in Jews, Judaism or Judea. I don't see any reason to doubt that Plutarch knew about Christianity, but nor do I see any reason why he should have thought it worth mentioning. Some of the arguments made in the list are just silly ("Plutarch wrote about influential Roman figures" - well bully for him. Jesus wasn't Roman though). There's nothing here that can support a valid argument form silence.
Justus This list makes no mention of the fact that the works of Justus are lost. It mentions Photius of Constantinople and his complaint that Justus should have mentioned Jesus. This must have seemed reasonable to Photius (cool name by the way. That's getting slapped on a D&D character!) but it should not be used as an argument from silence in a modern context. Photius, AKA St Photius the Great, was essentially Archbishop of Constantinople. He was a pious 9th Century Christia and would have believed Jesus to be a doer of great deeds. It would be reasonable for him to have expected Justus to have mentioned Jesus because Photius would have had a vastly exaggerated sense of Jesus' importance. It is far less surprising for modern observers. Also I think that making an argument from silence based upon works which we do not have takes the piss. Also, you said "multiple writers and historians of the period and over the next 100 years", so 9th Century Justus is out of the running. That's it. I don't find any of those examples compelling. The last one is awful. This does not come even close to the picture you presented. As for the rest, the list only mentions "could have" candidates and I'm not in the least bit impressed by that. A valid argument from silence needs more than "could have". Damis, Apollonius, Pausanias, Aelius Aristides, Aulus Gellius,Apuleius, Marcus Aurelius, Maximus of Tyre, Appian, Theon of Smyrna, Albinus, Aristocles, Apollodorus, Hephaestion, and Sextus Empiricus all fall outside of the hundred years you specify. Geminus, hilariously, falls before it, hailing from the First Century BC. Some of these examples are absurd in their choice of author. Why should Arrian, writing History of Alexander mention Jesus? No reason at all. Florus may mention "many names" in his Epitome of Roman History, but why should he mention the wholly irrelevant Jesus? No reason we are given (the list's author does not even trouble to mention that there is no certainty as to exactly which "Florus" is the author; there are three possibilities and the works may be by different authors). These examples are very, very poor. The idea that we can make a valid argument from silence regarding any of these is laughable. The only author mentioned on this list for whom a strong case might be made that he should have mentioned Jesus is - the mythicist's favourite - Flavius Josephus. He is clearly very interested in Jewish figures, Jewish rebel and prophets and events in the region. He is a pretty good candidate for a "should have". And guess what? He does mention Jesus. Twice. Yet somehow, when this is brought up, mythicists have no interest in the contents of ancient documents. They are far more interested in what sources don't say than what they do say and that's no way to go about this kind of endeavor. We should not be surprised that an author does not mention a given historical event or personage. They were not necessarily interested, and we do not always have the full works of such authors. Arguments from silence can be valid but they are dependent upon the two principles being adhered to and none of the examples cited here do that. It is not unusual for there to be a lack of contemporaneous sources. History is attested by sources far more fragmentary than we would like. Objecting to this comes across as naive as does this list. Mutate and Survive
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Percy Member Posts: 23144 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
I think I said something like this once before, but anyway, it isn't the height of the pile of scholars but the weight of their evidence. It's the "50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" fallacy.
--Percy
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Granny Magda Member (Idle past 355 days) Posts: 2462 From: UK Joined: |
I'm responding to Theodoric's claim. He claimed that there are multiple authors who don't believe in a historical Jesus, and I don't think he's demonstrated that.
Yes, I know that arguments from authority are invalid but both sides are going to make them anyway. They are doubly invalid though when there are so few experts willing to commit to mythicism. Mutate and Survive
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Percy Member Posts: 23144 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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Granny Magda in Message 388 writes: Yes, I know that arguments from authority are invalid but both sides are going to make them anyway. And both sides would be making logically false arguments. Hitchen's razor ("That which can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence") could be restated in this context as, "What is underpinned by logical fallacy can simply be dismissed." An example of such a dismissal might be, "Logical fallacy. Do you have any evidence?" If I said, "Hubble showed the universe is expanding," that would be an argument from authority, even though it's true that Hubble did show that, and even though there are mountains of evidence of it. But however true, my argument wasn't from evidence but from authority and therefore a fallacy. It can be very helpful as a shortcut to know that trusted authorities hold a certain point of view, but Biblical scholars are not trusted authorities. They're believers. When you look under the hood nothing's there, as opposed to when you look under the hood of Hubble's expanding universe. --Percy
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9489 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined:
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Yet no contemporary evidence for a historical Jesus. None, zero, zip.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. -Christopher Hitchens Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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