The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

[MrMacSon]

He wouldn't have been retrofitted into Christian documents. He is likely to have been, as the Catholic encyclopedia says, "..the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations..".

That would help is you provided the address of the web page so I could check the context of that quote.

Cordially, Bernard

I did. See the white text box in my post.

[Kapyong]

Gday Bernard Muller,
Allow me to politely note your tendency to respond to a critical argument by bashing a rather extreme straw-man.

Challenge: we should ask of these texts what we can learn about Christian origins; rather than dive right into them to learn what we can about Jesus and friends.
Response: What ? trash the texts ? chuck them all out ?
No.

Challenge: Christianity is based on the books, not the people in the books.
Response: So anonymous people got together to create all these fictional people ? (I.e. a conspiracy to foist a fake faith on their fellows with fiction and fraud ?)
No.

Is your comprehension of modern English here really so much worse than your competent abilities with ancient religious works ?
Please Bernard Muller - I don't think you are really engaging with the debate. I fear you are reduced to defending the Gospel Site of Bernard Muller against the slings and arrows of rampant mythicism.

In response -
yes, the writers are almost all anonymous - apart from Paul who is nothing else but a name, the entire NT was written by persons unknown. I think you'd agree.

But -
no, no-one 'got together' to make things up en masse. It happened in stages as your dating work supports, and in apparent isolation.

Paul wrote first, but the name Jesus / Joshua preceded him. Paul names James, Peter, John, Luke etc. - all real people.

Later unknown persons wrote epistles - some individual wrote a letter and ascribed it to James. Someone else ascribed his to Peter. Another person, or persons wrote letter(s) in the name of John. Etc.

Someone wrote G.Mark, others far away copied it. The names Peter, John, James etc. became characters in this literature.
And it all took a long time - many decades. Justin Martyr c.150 was the first on record to see all four Gospels.

Christianity started with the collection and arguing and eventual canonisation of documents.

The people IN the stories were already in the dim past when the stories appeared. There is no connection to them, no signs of them, no histories of them.

They are as historical as the Knights of the Round Table, Jason and the Argonauts, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, King Solomon and the united monarchy, Odysseus and his band.

Kapyong

[neilgodfrey]

Bernard, you especially -- you regularly ask us to read your long web pages. How about seriously doing the same with another's page?

I read the whole page but I found it convenient to quote the conclusion & comment on it.
Tim is trying to confuse the issue when it is very clear when James, the brother of John, is featured and when James, the brother of Jesus, is meant.

Cordially, Bernard

Tim is a real devil, isn't he. He takes a passage that makes perfectly clear sense to everyone and that fits entirely within the Acts-Eusebian paradigm and doesn't need to go beyond any nice simple, clear-cut assumptions that the text we read is a translation of just what Paul wrote back in the 50s CE with no corruption over the centuries through the war-zones of ideological transmission, and that needs none of the gumpf from me that brings the above model into question by contextualizing the data that lies beyond the letter itself -- -- Tim does all of that just to confuse the issue, the devil.

[neilgodfrey]

I have called Bernard's method "proof-texted" historical reconstruction. It is not Bernard's method, of course, but the method that is generally used by much of the academy of biblical scholars who write about Christian origins. It does involve a real critical evaluation of the data -- no question -- but the data itself is accepted as reliable and fundamentally sound enough to produce the model of Christian origins that is valid as long as it is evaluated and critiqued appropriately -- as Bernard makes a thorough attempt to do.

Perhaps I should not so much call it "proof-texting" because that implies there is no criticism at all of the data. A famous historian from way back criticized what he called the "scissors-and-paste" method of history. That was R. G. Collingwood -- he acknowledged that there is a critical evaluation of the data that is undertaken, but the data that is being evaluated is assumed to be reliable enough to yield to providing reliable answers to the questions that are posed to it.

When someone like Tim, for example, puts that data under literary analysis, and when I take another tack and contextualize it against what we know about the data in its totality, including its provenance and manuscript transmission through certain ideological battles, etc .... then the material that Bernard was relying upon to see what bits can be cut out and pasted to make up the "correct model" falls apart; it is no longer amenable to being cut and pasted via such criticism. It suddenly becomes a mass of problems and uncertainties that open up more questions than answers.

Unfortunately Bernard does resort to accusing others of unprofessional motives in response.

[Bernard Muller]

to Kapyong,
I agree with most of what you said but Christianity did not wait for the earliest Christian texts to be written in order to start. Paul himself said there were Christian apostles before him.

Paul wrote first, but the name Jesus / Joshua preceded him. Paul names James, Peter, John, Luke etc. - all real people.

So Peter, John, Luke, etc., named by Paul are real persons but Jesus, also named by Paul, as a crucified Jew would not be a real person!

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

to Neil,

I have called Bernard's method "proof-texted" historical reconstruction. It is not Bernard's method, of course, but the method that is generally used by much of the academy of biblical scholars who write about Christian origins. It does involve a real critical evaluation of the data -- no question -- but the data itself is accepted as reliable and fundamentally sound enough to produce the model of Christian origins that is valid as long as it is evaluated and critiqued appropriately -- as Bernard makes a thorough attempt to do.

So my methods are not so bad after all!

Perhaps I should not so much call it "proof-texting" because that implies there is no criticism at all of the data. A famous historian from way back criticized what he called the "scissors-and-paste" method of history. That was R. G. Collingwood -- he acknowledged that there is a critical evaluation of the data that is undertaken, but the data that is being evaluated is assumed to be reliable enough to yield to providing reliable answers to the questions that are posed to it.

I only use the data which I evaluated to be reliable enough to yield reliable answers. And I am not interested in details, so I can deal with little amount of reliable data in order to reconstruct the backbone path of the very beginning of Christianity through a process of evolution.

When someone like Tim, for example, puts that data under literary analysis, and when I take another tack and contextualize it against what we know about the data in its totality, including its provenance and manuscript transmission through certain ideological battles, etc .... then the material that Bernard was relying upon to see what bits can be cut out and pasted to make up the "correct model" falls apart; it is no longer amenable to being cut and pasted via such criticism. It suddenly becomes a mass of problems and uncertainties that open up more questions than answers.

I know that Tim, and yourself, and mythicists in general can create doubts for any historicist evidence. But creating doubts is not the same than cancelling that evidence.
And I do not just cut and paste. I go further than that: After all cut & paste is not going to bring about Jesus was not a teacher or his disciples never believed in the Resurrection, never became Christians and did not start the church of Jerusalem, etc. My analysis went way beyond cut & paste.

As for Tim's study on Gal 1:19 (http://vridar.org/2016/01/16/the-functi ... tians-119/), I am not impressed at all:
He wrote: "So it appears that Christians had two parallel, incompatible, and competing traditions".
Appearance only. And based on Eusebius reporting on Clement of Alexandria's writings. But here, it is self explanatory Clement is talking about two "James", in 3. James the brother of John at first and then James the Just, the brother of Jesus. In 4. one "James" is specified and he is James the Just.
Note: Written earlier than Clement of A's writings:
1) in Hegesippus' works , James the Just is also a brother of the Lord.
2) In the secret book of James, the alleged author called James, an equal of Peter and boss over the 12, is not presented as one of the 12.
3) In the gospel of Thomas, James the Just, as the would be boss of the 12, is not one of the disciples.

From that, Tim imagined competing traditions and two different triumvirates and pressure and with some trivial texts modification, went to his conclusion that "brother of the Lord" is an early interpolation. And an argument from silence again: Tim thought Paul should have reidentified James in Gal 2:9 but did not (I explained in an earlier post why that was not necessary. Also, for example, when you present "Obama, ex-president of the US", sentences later in the same text, just "Obama" is enough).

That's not a historical method, just finding excuses to eliminate a historicist evidence.

Cordially, Bernard

[Bernard Muller]

to Neil,

Tim is a real devil, isn't he. He takes a passage that makes perfectly clear sense to everyone and that fits entirely within the Acts-Eusebian paradigm and doesn't need to go beyond any nice simple, clear-cut assumptions that the text we read is a translation of just what Paul wrote back in the 50s CE with no corruption over the centuries through the war-zones of ideological transmission, and that needs none of the gumpf from me that brings the above model into question by contextualizing the data that lies beyond the letter itself -- -- Tim does all of that just to confuse the issue, the devil

I cannot believe that somebody like you, full of smarts and knowledge, do not see the enormous weaknesses of Tim's arguments in http://vridar.org/2016/01/16/the-functi ... tians-119/.
It seems when you see something which opposes the historicity of Jesus your critical power goes to a dead zero.

Cordially, Bernard

[andrewcriddle]

I have called Bernard's method "proof-texted" historical reconstruction. It is not Bernard's method, of course, but the method that is generally used by much of the academy of biblical scholars who write about Christian origins. It does involve a real critical evaluation of the data -- no question -- but the data itself is accepted as reliable and fundamentally sound enough to produce the model of Christian origins that is valid as long as it is evaluated and critiqued appropriately -- as Bernard makes a thorough attempt to do.

Perhaps I should not so much call it "proof-texting" because that implies there is no criticism at all of the data. A famous historian from way back criticized what he called the "scissors-and-paste" method of history. That was R. G. Collingwood -- he acknowledged that there is a critical evaluation of the data that is undertaken, but the data that is being evaluated is assumed to be reliable enough to yield to providing reliable answers to the questions that are posed to it.

When someone like Tim, for example, puts that data under literary analysis, and when I take another tack and contextualize it against what we know about the data in its totality, including its provenance and manuscript transmission through certain ideological battles, etc .... then the material that Bernard was relying upon to see what bits can be cut out and pasted to make up the "correct model" falls apart; it is no longer amenable to being cut and pasted via such criticism. It suddenly becomes a mass of problems and uncertainties that open up more questions than answers.

Unfortunately Bernard does resort to accusing others of unprofessional motives in response.

The problem is that almost any ancient text treated sufficiently critically will become ambiguous/undecipherable. If one is a/ sceptical about the integrity of the text as found in all surviving ancient manuscripts, and b/ sceptical about using clear statements in related but somewhat later material in order to interpret the text, then the text almost inevitably becomes problematic. How interesting a result this is may be another matter.


FWIW Collingwood discusses scissors and paste history. IMHO I don't think he is opposing historians for being optimistic about being able to provide answers to questions. He is criticizing over-simplistic methodology not advocating agnosticism.

Andrew Criddle

[neilgodfrey]

The problem is that almost any ancient text treated sufficiently critically will become ambiguous/undecipherable.

No, not so at all. One would only achieve such an outcome if one were not being critical by nihilistic, stupid, hostile to what one was reading. That's not genuine criticism. Criticism aims to understand a text and its limitations, not to destroy it.

If one is a/ sceptical about the integrity of the text as found in all surviving ancient manuscripts, and b/ sceptical about using clear statements in related but somewhat later material in order to interpret the text, then the text almost inevitably becomes problematic. How interesting a result this is may be another matter.

Your a/ is perfectly reasonable and necessary for every historian to follow. Every document needs to be tested for its authenticity. That surely goes without saying.

As for b/ -- we are jumping the gun here. All statements need to be interpreted in context. Every text has two contexts: one, the surrounding text in that document; two, the world outside the document -- and that includes both the history of the provenance of the document and the ideas and experiences in the world that led to the composition of the text.

Too often biblical historians (and their lay followers) skip at least one of the above steps.

If you had a text that described a murder you need to first of all know what sort of text it is and where it came from before reporting the contents to the local police.

FWIW Collingwood discusses scissors and paste history. IMHO I don't think he is opposing historians for being optimistic about being able to provide answers to questions. He is criticizing over-simplistic methodology not advocating agnosticism.

Andrew Criddle

I don't think I suggested that Collingwood ever was opposed to historians being optimistic about being able to provide answers to questions, did I?

But you next sentence overlooks the critical point of the discussion. It is that documents need to be analyzed in various ways in order for the historian to know what questions they can validly answer.

The over-simplistic methodology that Collingwood is criticizing is the one followed by too many biblical historians (and Bernard, here).

[neilgodfrey]

to Neil,

I have called Bernard's method "proof-texted" historical reconstruction. It is not Bernard's method, of course, but the method that is generally used by much of the academy of biblical scholars who write about Christian origins. It does involve a real critical evaluation of the data -- no question -- but the data itself is accepted as reliable and fundamentally sound enough to produce the model of Christian origins that is valid as long as it is evaluated and critiqued appropriately -- as Bernard makes a thorough attempt to do.

So my methods are not so bad after all!

Only "not so bad" if you stopped reading at the words "no question".

You read critically the documents, but you do not apply literary analysis to the documents to test them and discover what sorts of documents they really are.

You would not assume that a popular anonymous publication about a long-ago murder was a true record of a true event unless you applied various tests to it. The tests typically applied to the epistles and gospels in the NT fall very far short of the tests that are applied by classicists to ancient documents. They apply literary analysis and contextual tests so thorough that they even conclude that a document by a well-known author that purports to be a true biography of that author's teacher may in fact be about a fictitious teacher! That suggests a pretty tight standard of analysis, and when I suggest the same standards be applied to NT works, I am told I am being too extreme, etc.

I only use the data which I evaluated to be reliable enough to yield reliable answers.

On what criteria or through what test did you conclude that the words in Galatians 1:19 are authentic to the pen of Paul writing in the 50s CE?

I know that Tim, and yourself, and mythicists in general can create doubts for any historicist evidence. But creating doubts is not the same than cancelling that evidence.

Certainly I have expressed reasons to doubt the conventional views of many biblical texts, but I am following the methods used by non-mythicists, including a number of New Testament scholars. I do get tired of you always bringing up mythicism. Anyone would think mythicism is your greatest fear and that you must fight for all you are worth against any method that might conceivably lead to a conclusion other than the one you have defended for so long.

I have no problem whatever in accepting the historicity of Jesus. I would welcome a role for the figure in any construction of Christian origins. I don't have any secret fear that such an admission would make me worry about my atheism. I might even welcome Jesus being historical because it would mean I would not have to put up with headaches that come my way from time to time over the question.

I think a historian, acting professionally, should be open to all possibilities. But as far as I am concerned, I see no reason or opening to explain Christian origins with a historical Jesus. That does NOT mean I deny a historical Jesus. Just that I don't know how the evidence we have can support the idea, that's all. Your mileage differs. That's fine. No problem.

And I do not just cut and paste. I go further than that: .... My analysis went way beyond cut & paste.

Sorry but we seem to have missed the point. Collingwood used the metaphor to describe the process of a critical selection of data from the records, and even a reinterpretation of the selected data into something that looks quite different from what appeared in the original record.

As for Tim's study on Gal 1:19 (http://vridar.org/2016/01/16/the-functi ... tians-119/), I am not impressed at all:
He wrote: "So it appears that Christians had two parallel, incompatible, and competing traditions".
Appearance only. And based on Eusebius reporting on Clement of Alexandria's writings. But here, it is self explanatory Clement is talking about two "James", in 3. James the brother of John at first and then James the Just, the brother of Jesus. In 4. one "James" is specified and he is James the Just.
Note: Written earlier than Clement of A's writings:
1) in Hegesippus' works , James the Just is also a brother of the Lord.
2) In the secret book of James, the alleged author called James, an equal of Peter and boss over the 12, is not presented as one of the 12.
3) In the gospel of Thomas, James the Just, as the would be boss of the 12, is not one of the disciples.

From that, Tim imagined competing traditions and two different triumvirates and pressure and with some trivial texts modification, went to his conclusion that "brother of the Lord" is an early interpolation. And an argument from silence again: Tim thought Paul should have reidentified James in Gal 2:9 but did not (I explained in an earlier post why that was not necessary. Also, for example, when you present "Obama, ex-president of the US", sentences later in the same text, just "Obama" is enough).

That's not a historical method, just finding excuses to eliminate a historicist evidence.

You are welcome to disagree, and I am sure Tim would welcome any discussion and serious engagement with his analysis. But when you accuse him of not composing a serious argument with valid reasoning (even if you disagree and argue with it, which is fine) and dismiss him as merely "making excuses" -- then one wonders if you find it possible to have any real respect for any view other than your own.

Tim, by the way, is NOT a mythicist. We disagree on that point, iirc. (But I have not discussed the question with him for a long time -- it's simply not a big issue with me.)

But there still remains my own post that you have not addressed here, as far as I am aware. You do not like the methods of literary analysis within the context of provenance, okay .... but I took a completely different form of testing of the passage. I am sure you will dispute my conclusion, too -- and therefore I expect you will dispute my methods. Perhaps you will find historical-critical approach to Gal 1:19 to be just "making excuses", too.

But as I pointed out earlier, when you simply dismiss alternative approaches and methods as "making excuses" you do come across as being incapable of understanding methods and approaches and conclusions that you disagree with, and are in fact intolerant of anything but your own methods and conclusions. That is what it sounds like.