The Best Case for Jesus

[toejam]

^Remember though, that both your "allegedlys" need to fall in your favor, because if either Paul OR Josephus did refer to an actual brother of Jesus, then it's pretty much a closed case. Even if each individual reference is only assigned a 33.3% chance of being an authentic reference to a brother of Jesus by said author (an assignment well below the consensus of current scholarly opinion), then it's still greater than 50% that one of them will be an actual authentic reference to a brother of Jesus by said author. And this is only one piece of the puzzle.

At least that's how I see it.

[Sheshbazzar]

And you didn't happen to notice that I just quoted and replied to that very post?

But you did not notice I answered your question.

Some excuse for an answer. Your reply doesn't even address the question being asked;

How in the hell is it that you are able to determine that a first century tax collector of Jericho didn't exist??

How YOU arrived at YOUR previously stated personal belief Zacchaeus the tax collector didn't exist.
What methodology did YOU employ to arrive at such a conclusion or belief?
If you have a valid and rational methodology for identifying and separating fictional persons from historical ones it would be a valuable contribution to scholars of history everywhere.

Mark's gospel is a 'prophecy fulfillment' theologically contrived religious fiction cult propaganda production.

But Mark's friends and neighbours knew it was just a gripping STORY!

Perhaps. but no way of knowing at this late date.
But whether or not the author of 'Mark', (which almost all critical scholars agree, was not the 'apostle Mark' of the story) was well known as the writer of 'The Gospel which is According to Mark' to his friends and neighbors is irrelevant to the fact that the text of Mark's gospel is a 'prophecy fulfillment' theologically contrived religious fiction cult propaganda production.
Its a story that has moved countless hundreds of millions of hearers and readers to tears, So yes I'd say that constitutes a pretty gripping story. Over 6 billion copies sold, countless numbers of religious books based on that gripping story, thousands of plays, and hundreds of movies.

Paul by his own admissions never met any flesh and blood Jesus.

Why do we have to meet someone in person to know he/she exists/existed?
Paul saw Jesus' brother, James. Did James invent his brother?

There you go again. This you know ....'cause the Bible tells you so.

It's in the Bible, you believe the Bible, the Bible says that 'Paul wrote ...., and that settles it?

You have some religious reason for believing whatever the self-styled "apostle" 'Paul' (or is it a 'pseudo-Paul') tells you?

Do you think that "apostle" Paul would have wrote it down, if James upon hearing his tall-tale had actually told him the equivalent of;
'Go on! Get the fuck outta here! Go! Screw with the ignorant and gullible gentiles minds with your unclean cadaver god horse shit.'
Nah, 'ol Paul woud'a spun it; (Gal 2:7-9)

Josephus was living in Jerusalem when James was executed. Why would he rely on "heard circulating legends"?

I only offered it as a possibility regarding the 'Jesus of Nazareth' tall-tale as presented in the gospels, Acts, and epistles.
If Josephus by some chance caught a whiff of that brand of contrived theological horse shit.

Now IF Josephus knew some other Jesus from Nazareth, a real one that didn't go around 'fulfilling' hundreds of prophecies, it isn't known. None of his surviving writings describe any such a common man Jesus anywhere. And there is no record nor reported claims that any ever did.

There are billions of people now, including you, I did not meet in person: shall I conclude they did not exist?

Out of these billions of people now, including me, how many do you expect would have a 'history' and reason for 'existing' consisting of little more than a succession of scenes 'fulfilling' hundreds of ancient Bible prophecies?
I am not aware of a person on earth past or present that has ever lived such a life, ...except for one story book character.

I have no difficulty at alll in believing in the common existence of all the billions of my fellow man pat and present.
But mythical Jesus of Nazareth the christos zombie god was never one of them.

If 'Jesus of Nazareth' did not 'fulfill' Bible prophecies, then there is no identifiable historical 'Jesus of Nazareth' ,
as the only 'historical' Jesus of Nazareth' is the 'Jesus of Nazareth' that was 'crucified' to fulfill the Bibles prophecies.
The reason the story was written. Take away the 'prophecy fulfilling "crucifixion", and poof! there is no reason for even the memory of a 'Jesus of Nazareth', and no 'Jesus of Nazareth' to be found.
Its only an old made up religious 'passion story'. Not any actual history.

Now as far as my existence, how do you think I contend with you, if I don't exist?

Sheshbazzar

[Leucius Charinus]

I think some valuable issues have been raised here to do with the difference between the "Historical Method" used by ancient historians in general, and the "Other Methods" used by Biblical Historians and Textual Critics in their analysis of the NT Bible.

Forgive me for raising one criticism in an otherwise very commendable essay by Peter.

My concern relates to the message in the following passages:

However it is not really the historical method to go about completely discounting every possible testimony as false. It must be admitted as offering a degree of positive evidence for the historicity of Jesus, even if the testimony might be false.

They say that quantity has a quality all its own. Is it not at least interesting that in the first half of the second century (if not earlier) we witness such an explosion of written material regarding Jesus, his story and sayings? Again, as we mentioned in the discussion of Tacitus, this kind of evidence is far from conclusive but it may at least meet the standard of prima facie evidence. It is the kind of thing that should put the shoe on the other foot and require us to have good reason for doubt about the historical existence of Jesus.

Anyone being fair about the matter should admit that this brings the historicity of Jesus to the status of “some positive historical evidence.” If there were absolutely zero evidence against, then we’d have to give the balance of evidence to the historicity of Jesus. No doubt the failure of some skeptics to make these kinds of admissions proves frustrating in this discussion. It is perfectly alright to have a high evidentiary standard and to judge that the historicity of Jesus does not make it. It is perfectly alright to have considered the entire case in the round and to judge the evidence against the historicity of Jesus to be better than the evidence for. But it is just a bit off to attempt to argue that there is nothing at all, zero degrees Kelvin, to give heat to the positive case for the historicity of Jesus and thus to declare that the balance of evidence is simply nil-nil.

What I think is overlooked when such statements are made is a point made by Niels Peter Lemche recently in response to Eric Cline's newest publication, 1177:

What I was really referring to was the traditional craft of the historian: Source criticism. It is the alpha and the omega of an historian’s craft. Then we can put everything else on top of that. . . . But few archaeologists (including also people such as Israel Finkelstein) have had the training in textual analysis which has been a must in historical research since the days of Barthold Niebuhr c. 1810.

One can find online the sort of thing Lemche sees as the sine qua non of historical method since Niebuhr:

But the consideration that the early history, such as it has come down to us, is impossible, must lead us to enquire whether the earliest annals are deserving of credit. Our task now is to prove that the earliest history does contain imposslbilitics, that it is poetical, that the very portions which are not of a poetical nature, are forgeries, and, consequently, that the history must be traced back to ancient lays and to a chronology which was invented and adapted to these lays at a later period. (Neibuhr, Lectures on The History of Rome, p. 1)

And Neibuhr is addressing work that has all the appearance of being a genuine (by ancient "definitions") historical narrative.

I believe one cannot validly place content found in a work by, say, Tacitus, alongside content found in a canonical gospel, and consider the two "historical evidence" that needs comparison and evaluation.

We need first of all to establish that our sources were ever intended to contain "historical evidence".

This is identifying the genre of the source.

One sees the assumption regularly in historical Jesus studies that the gospels must be read as "historical reports" despite all their theological and metaphorical spin. Stevan Davies, for example, uses the language of "report" (connoting the idea that information is being relayed with some sort of historical or newsworthy belief -- even if mistaken or deluded or false) scores of times in his new work Spirit Possession and the Origins of Christianity. He speaks throughout of the "reports of Jesus' activities" even in places where other scholars have seen entirely "midrashic" or theological or "parabolic" narratives.

Again, this is another unexamined hypothesis employed by the Biblical Historians. Namely that the genre of the NT books in general allows the possibility that these accounts do contain at least some history. This is an hypothesis held to be true by convention.

I have made the following analogy before to try explain this point. Police can receive reports about a murder from persons calling them, from old files, from other files and information sent by outside authorities, etc. All of these would be worthy of investigation as genuine "reports". But to come across a manuscript of a story alone that purports to be a report of a murder is a nonstarter. Context and provenance of the source is everything. Lemche's textual analysis is also a fundamental part of source criticism. If textual analysis can establish the entirely literary character of the manuscript it is even less of a nonstarter.

Textual analysis shares the above hypothesis. It tells us nothing about the external political appearance of the text as an object in history with a genre to be determined. The genre of a holy writ is probably some sort of starting point IMO.

Textual critics have succeeded for many generations to extract historical significance from the gospels and other canonical books of the NT. I think one of the greatest bits of evidence there is against the method of using the above hypothesis (the genre of the gospels admit the possibility that they do contain at least some history is when textual critics apply the same methods to the non canonical gospels and acts. You would think the same method is applicable to both the canonical and the non canonical accounts wouldn't you? Well it isn't. AFAIK the non canonical literature is openly regarded as "a textual critic's nightmare".

Why? Perhaps it is because the hypothesis identified above is not true?

Yet many biblical scholars do not work this way and I think it is a mistake for anyone else to buy into their methods. Some scholars even say that the job of the "historian" is to bypass analyses of the structure and nature of the text itself and try to peel away that surface dirt and find history "behind" the text.

Historians normally give some credence to a source when they can have some knowledge of its provenance (meaning knowledge of who produced it, and something about whoever that was, their interests etc), of its sources, and also some independent corroborating evidence.

I think one of the key attributes of provenance is chronology. Some texts are explicitly dated. Some are not. Some texts provide the name of the author. Some don't. Some texts have been ascribed to a "pseudo-author". Other texts are perceived as genuine enough.

GENRE ....

Taken for granted, here, is an understanding of a sources genre (a historiography, an epic, a letter, etc). Genre alone can be deceiving, though, as many scholars have been learning in relation to Herodotus. The "father of history" appears to many in fact to have "lied" about inscriptions he supposedly saw, places he supposedly traveled to and people he supposedly spoke with, etc.

If we don't have these things then that does not mean our source does not contain historical information but it does mean we have no way of knowing if it does at all until we do the sorts of analysis Lemche and Niebuhr spoke of. In other words it cannot be used either way, either for or against.

If analysis of the document (necessarily by comparison with other evidence) does lead us to have some general idea of when and where it was produced and something about the kind of writing it is (genre) then it can be used as historical evidence. But all of this information may only allow us to validly use it as evidence for something of the beliefs, culture, ideas at the time of its author/audience. Its narrative contents cannot be used as "reports" of past events unless other criteria (mentioned above) are met.

And here is a valuable introduction to the history known to the ancient historians, and the history known to the Biblical Historians which is largely sourced in that genre of history known as "Ecclesiastical History".

Momigliano has a bit to say about this type of history in his books. Here is an extract from one:

• "In no other history does precedent mean so much as ecclesiastical history.
  The very continuity of the institution of the church throughout the centuries
  makes it inevitable that anything which happened in the church's past should
  be relevant to its present. Furthermore - and this is most essential - in the
  Church conformity with the origins is evidence of truth. This doctrine may be
  interpretted differently in the various denominations; but it is never absent
  in any of them. A Church that consciously breaks with its original principles
  and its original institutions is inconceivable. The Church knows a return to
  the principles, not a break with the principles."
  
  
  p.136
  "The corpus mysticum of the Ecclesia universalis".
  
  
  p.137
  "What is unmistakably apparent in ecclesiatical historians
  is the care for their documentation."
  
  
  "The very importance of precedent and tradition in ecclesiastical history
  compelled the ecclesiastical historians to quote documentary evidence to
  an extent which is seldom to be found in political historians."
  
  
  
  p.138
  "We have defined some of the essential elements of ecclesiastical historiography:
  1) the continuous interrelation of dogma and facts;
  2) the transcendental significance attributed to the period of origins;
  3) the emphasis on factual evidence;
  4) the ever present problem of relating events of local churches to the
  mystical body of the universal church."
  
  
  Chapter 6 - The Origins of Ecclesiastical Historiography
  The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography
  Arnaldo Momigliano
  Sather Classical Lectures (1961-62)
  Volume Fifty-Four
  University of California Press, 1990

I don't believe any of this is "hyperscepticism" (whatever that's supposed to mean). It's how historians generally treat their sources routinely.

This is the point. Hypotheses (such as the one discussed above) are NOT assumed to be true ...

Historians do not work inside the same industry as the Biblical Historians.

Maybe that's the problem: they do so so routinely that the method is taken for granted and rarely spelled out and is thus easily forgotten and overlooked. Since it seems that historians just intuitively know what narratives to treat as sources for past events, it appears that when it comes to a history so embedded in our cultural consciousness as Christian origins that would-be "historians" simply assume their major documents are also intuitively "historical sources". Michael Grant is a classic example of this error. When he came to writing about Christian history he jettisoned all the taken-for-granted methods of historians and embraced in toto the assumptions and methods of the theologians.

Interesting point.

In their more reflective moments theologians know this fallacy. Sanders, Allison and Davies have all conceded that their starting point for their study of a historical Jesus is necessarily based on a circular argument: in short, the gospels tell us Jesus was X and we know this because Jesus was X and the Gospels confirm this.

The Albert Schweitzer effect. The Jesus found often resembles the Jesus being looked for.

Back to the OP and the best case for historicity ----

A best case in my view would understand the fundamentals of how (nonbiblical) historians (at least ideally) treat their sources. They would not make unsupportable or circular assumptions about them. The best case would not rest on invalid treatment of sources. It would seek to explain the sources we have given what we know (or don't know) of their literary character and provenance.

Bizarre as it would seem to many here, that would mean that someone like John Spong poses one form of a "best case" argument by declaring that only a truly great individual could have inspired virtually completely mythical tales. In fact that's a thesis that could seriously be investigated.

"Memory theory" is a new thing now that is trying to uncover what we can most closely consider historical about Jesus. But as it is being applied today by LeDonne and Keith and others it is still based on the logically flawed criteria of embarrassment. LeDonne still appeals to those criteria as his starting point.

A best case scenario might attempt to apply memory theory to the literary evidence without any assumptions that need to be supported by logically fallacious criteria. I imagine this sort of inquiry would overlap with the one above.

I am sceptical of any best case scenarios due to the statistical distribution of forged or interpolated manuscripts
that have been preserved within the auspices of the church organization between the present day and antiquity.




LC

[Leucius Charinus]

^Remember though, that both your "allegedlys" need to fall in your favor, because if either Paul OR Josephus did refer to an actual brother of Jesus, then it's pretty much a closed case. Even if each individual reference is only assigned a 33.3% chance of being an authentic reference to a brother of Jesus by said author (an assignment well below the consensus of current scholarly opinion), then it's still greater than 50% that one of them will be an actual authentic reference to a brother of Jesus by said author. And this is only one piece of the puzzle.

At least that's how I see it.

I don't necessarily see the statistical probability that way because of the possibility that the two sources may not be independent.

You are assuming Paul and Josephus are two separate and totally independent texts. They were both preserved by the church organization. One or both of them may have been corrupted by an editor or editors in their non-immaculate transmission from antiquity to the present day. If we were discussing manuscripts which were written in antiquity and sealed in a jar from that date until their recent discovery, such as the Nag Hammadi Codices, then I would agree with your assessment of independence.

If the sources are not independent (for any reason at all) then the answer stays at 33.3% and does not increase.

When certain elements in the puzzle contain forged bits, statistical probabilities need to be adjusted.

I maintain that there is a right to be critically skeptical of any and all manuscripts tendered and/or preserved by the church organization.



LC

[toejam]

Leucius Charinus said:

I don't necessarily see the statistical probability that way because of the possibility that the two sources may not be independent

Sure. But I've already taken this possibility into consideration - my %s reflect a degree of doubt as a result of the acknowledged possibility of total dependence and/or interpolation etc. So nothing's really changing here.

[DCHindley]

The Albert Schweitzer effect. The Jesus found often resembles the Jesus being looked for.

Actually, that was someone else's characterization of the result of Schweitzer's analysis of 19th century critics. While managing to identify problems with the works of their predecessors, and thus advancing knowledge, those critics also had a tendency to be too reliant on their own, modern, presuppositions. They look down the well and thought that they were seeing the "real" Jesus on the face of the water, but were actually seeing their own reflections. That's called the postmodern perspective (we look back at the past but interpret from the present) and is unavoidable as 100% of people do it 100% of the time, being part and parcel of how we think.

Being aware of this, and carefully using methodology to reduce the signal (evidence) to noise (interpretive bias) ratio, does yield some tangible results that can be relied on as facts. Atom bombs were certainly dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasake, but there will be difference of opinion as to the ethical dimension based on whether you identify with those who dropped the bombs, or those upon whom they were dropped.

DCH

[Sheshbazzar]

^Remember though, that both your "allegedlys" need to fall in your favor, because if either Paul OR Josephus did refer to an actual brother of Jesus, then it's pretty much a closed case. Even if each individual reference is only assigned a 33.3% chance of being an authentic reference to a brother of Jesus by said author (an assignment well below the consensus of current scholarly opinion), then it's still greater than 50% that one of them will be an actual authentic reference to a brother of Jesus by said author. And this is only one piece of the puzzle.

At least that's how I see it.

Such attempts at bare statistical analysis are fundamentally flawed;

"apostle" 'Paul' never met any living Jesus.

'Paul' claims to have met the 'brother' of 'Jesus'. The claim itself is suspicious.

'Paul' has a strong motive to persuade his audience that the famous James supports his ministry.
'Paul' has motive to misrepresent.

James himself, allegedly the brother of 'Jesus' and alleged head of the 'Church' never left a word about any 'Jesus', about any 'Christian Church', or anything at all commending 'Paul's' ministry.

All evidence, indicates that James and the Jerusalem khasidim remained a Torah observant Jews throughout their lives;
Paul's alleged gospel teaching did nothing to convince those who would have, if there had been a Jesus, known his teachings first hand.

You cannot validly employ the testimony of a source that is of questionable mental stability (the Damascus road episode, 'visions', hearing disembodied 'voices' etc.)
and which would have a strong motive to fabricate/distort/misrepresent/lie about the quality of his claimed 'connections'.

There is no way that 'Paul's' claim (whichever of the many 'Paul's' it was that had a hand in the production of the 'Pauline' epistles) can validly be credited with 33% probability.

Josephus wrote about several 'Jesus's'. The tiny portions of his work that are allegedly (according to Christian claims) about 'Jesus of Nazareth' are extremely suspicious, in light of Josephus's normal working method of providing vivid and detailed accounts of even notable minor personages among the Jews.

If the infamous Christian 'Jesus' had done 100th of what these Christian texts claim he did, and was anywhere as near renowned as claimed, Josephus would have devoted entire chapters to the situation.

Given the very questionable provenance and shaky premises of those scant Josephan texts, it is not credible scholarship to arbitrarily assign to them any 33% probability of being factual.
The flaw in the methodology is in the unsupportable assumption of these being valid unbiased and accurate reports.
Credibility is not to be assumed in the total absence of contemporary corroborating attestation by independent and uninterested parties.
If you are going to succumb that piss-poor of a methodology, you may as well assign a 50% probability that 500 brethren saw Jesus Christ levitate into the clouds.

Really, for the establishing of the 'historical' status of 'Jesus of Nazareth', on sound research principals, the alleged writings of 'Paul' and of Josephus provide us with absolutely zip, and no percentages can validly be applied to what may in fact consist of nothing more than Christian generated fictions. Christian type apologetics be damned.


Sheshbazzar

[Bernard Muller]

to Sheshbazzar,

Your above post was posted 20 minutes after my reply to your 'noon' post.

Trying to find excuses again! You asked me again (in large and bold letters!) for a reply 10 hours after my "noon" message explanations.

how in the hell is it that you are able to determine that a first century tax collector of Jericho didn't exist??

Why are you still asking a question that I already answered? Even if my explanations are for you "equine excrement", it is still an answer, do you like it or not.

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

to MrMacSon,

Paul allegedly saw Jesus alleged brother James (who could have been a 'fellow-brethren brother' rather than being a sibling)

But Paul never called his own Christians that way ("brother(s) of the Lord").

& when "a James was executed"

This James is not only "a" James, but defined as the brother of Jesus called Christ.

Cordially, Bernard

[Sheshbazzar]

to Sheshbazzar,

Your above post was posted 20 minutes after my reply to your 'noon' post.

Trying to find excuses again! You asked me again (in large and bold letters!) for a reply 10 hours after my "noon" message explanations.

how in the hell is it that you are able to determine that a first century tax collector of Jericho didn't exist??

Why are you still asking a question that I already answered? Even if my explanations are for you "equine excrement", it is still an answer, do you like it or not.

Cordially, Bernard

That the mention of Zacchaeus the tax collector from Jericho is only to be found in Luke is your only reason for believing that there was never any tax collector from Jericho named Zacchaeus?
Is that all?

Zacchaeus the tax collector didn't perform any unbelievable miracles, or 'fulfill prophecies'.
A pretty lame excuse, for your unbelief in what may well prove to have been an actual person, if I may say so.

That you have chosen that position does serve to make me a bit more confident that the crypt or sarcophagus of Zacchaeus the rich tax collector from Jericho will be located.

Thanks, Sheshbazzar