The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 10:13 am..... I have found historians to be very conscious of the fact that they are not doing what is done in court. On pages 149-150 of Understanding History, Louis Gottschalk (a former historian of the French Revolution) writes, for example:

In a law court it is frequently assumed that all testimony of a witness, though under oath, is suspect if the opposing lawyers can impugn his general character or by examination and cross-examination create doubt of his veracity in some regard. Even in modern law courts the old maxim falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus tends to be overemphasized. In addition, hearsay evidence is as a general rule excluded; certain kinds of witnesses are "privileged" or "unqualified" and therefore are not obliged to testify or are kept from testifying.... The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as judge he rules out no evidence whatever if it is relevant.

I haven't read Gottschalk but doesn't the section quoted actually point to the similarity of methods between a trial situation and historical research? I read his analogy as saying that the historian has to be as aware of the problematic nature of working with sources as lawyers and judges and juries need to be.

Of course there are obvious differences, but the fundamental principles of weighting different kinds of sources/evidence is common to both. Historians also consider the character or bias of authors of various sources and the problematic nature of hearsay testimony.

(And contemporary eyewitness accounts are the most weighty of all -- both in trials and for historians.)

Historians don't as a rule get away with treating all their sources as being of equal weight or validity.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 10:13 amHistorians are also free to indulge in hypotheses which would be ruled out of court before they even got off the ground. Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier write on page 77 of From Reliable Sources, for instance:

Although it is a simple process to think up hypotheses, it is no simple task to formulate hypotheses that actually link the observed pieces of evidence—that can explain the facts available, not those that the scholar might wish to have. Often, it takes many tries before the scholar can formulate a hypothesis that really works—one that satisfactorily accounts for the known evidence. There is no formula for success in this difficult venture. .... The difficulties of applying the so-called scientific method to historical research means that historians must often satisfy themselves with rules of logic that appear less watertight, making statements that seem probable, not "proved" in any "scientific" sense. .... But historians never have just what they want or need. At one extreme is the historian limited to one source. Einhard's Life of Charlemagne is, for example, the only source scholars have about the private life of Europe's first emperor. Like many of the political biographies written today, this one is more hagiography than critical biography, and in the best of worlds historians might well refuse to use it as evidence about Charlemagne's life and his character. But historians, although conscious that they are prisoners of the unique source and bear all the risks that this involves, use it because it is all they have. At the other extreme are historians studying the recent past. They have a great many sources, and in many ways their problems are thus fewer. But even here there is no certainty.

From what I understand, this kind of dive-in reasoning, meant simply to take parsimonious account of all the available evidence, has no place in a criminal trial, but is much more at home in a "free inquiry" situation in which a person's life does not hang in the balance.
My reading of Howell and Prevenier here indicates to me that they are very aware of the tentative and uncertain nature of simply "thinking up hypotheses" and how it is much harder, yet necessary, to hone down hypotheses so that they cohere with all the source material. The procedures are obviously different in a courtroom, but the professional historian does acknowledge the same problems with certain kinds of hypotheses as we find in the legal profession. That's how I interpret the passage above.

Similarly with the sole witness of Charlemagne. I can't imagine any historian (serious professional as opposed to a mass market children's or popular story teller) simply rewrites a medieval hagiography.
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

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neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:49 pmWe are addressing two different concepts in this thread. History is understood as explanatory or descriptive narrative. But there is also the understanding of history as getting basic facts right.
Well, yes. Quite. That is why my definition of history, given at your request, included precisely these two aspects (determining what happened and explaining it). The reason for your objection to the second half of my definition is still unclear to me.
Court trials etc are of course different in many respects from historical research. Though there is one case where the two did come very close, and that was the Holocaust Denial trial of David Irving (more correctly the trial brought by Irving against Deborah Lipstadt.)

The basic principles of determining "raw facts" are the same in both and in probably most areas of life. Independent corroboration looms large. Provenance is a word that covers a wealth of "data" and it is also high on the list of importance.
I think I can agree with you on most of this. Yes, independent corroboration looms large in historical studies; we are always craving it. No, court trials and historical studies do not share the same standards of proof. I think we are in agreement here.
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:39 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Sep 14, 2017 11:18 pmAgain, does my recent hypothesis/suggestion (to wit, that Paul and other early Christians had no knowledge of any historical Jesus) fit into what you are calling the gospel-Acts-Eusebian model?

(This relates to what you wrote here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3346&start=410#p74309.)
The standard model that I understand to be dominating the field is that Christianity had a beginning point with the apostles who went out preaching and converting the world, with subgroups breaking off in various factions along the way, either as a result of outside or inside challenges. The apostle who looms largest, of course, is Paul. I think that's the fundamental story of Acts and Eusebius and most histories of Christian origins.
Thank you for clarifying.

In that case, my suggestion obviously does not fall within the parameters of the Acts-Eusebius model, and you were mistaken to think that my views on historical research had anything whatsoever to do with justifying adherence to that model.
Well I read lots of historical works where the historian simply tells the reader of the ambiguity or uncertainty that arises in the sources. No one is obliged to just decide for themselves on a whim which version is true; where there is doubt or debate, historians that I read tell readers there is doubt or debate. If they have a preference for one side they explain the arguments.
I am in complete agreement that it is good practice to let readers know where there is debate or doubt, and to explain the arguments for or against one's own preferred reconstruction.
I am a bit confused by these objections.
Well, if you are treating them all as objections, of course you will be confused, since most of the things that I have written to you on this thread are questions, not suggestions. A couple of my questions may have turned into objections at some point, but only after the initial round of questions was asked and answered.

To be perfectly frank, I find your writing to be confusing at times, and I seek clarity. Another example follows here below....
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 5:51 pmMy point is that I believe we need to work with the Jesus we have, the Jesus on the pages of the texts, the textual Jesus. . . . That is the Jesus we need to explain. He is the only one a historian has to work with.

....

My point about the textual Jesus is that we cannot go beyond that. That little diagram of McGrath's graphically declaring that the historian needs to go beyond the texts is flawed. It is what sets biblical studies "historians" apart from historians in other fields. If historians of Julius Caesar studied "the historical Julius Caesar" in the sources the same way biblical scholars studied the historical Jesus in the sources they'd be considered crazy.
I find myself wondering what you mean by "going beyond the texts" in this context. In my example of Nero slaying his own mother, our evidence for this event comes strictly from texts. If an historian defends the idea that Nero really did, in the actual course of events in Roman times, commit matricide (based on the sifted testimony of those texts), is that historian going beyond the text, to use your term for it? Conversely, if an historian tends to doubt that Nero ever did such a thing, despite what all the texts say, is that historian going beyond the text in suggesting that all the texts are wrong about the actual events which lie (or do not lie) behind them? Or, if attempting to establish the reality of events behind (and leading up to) a text is not what you mean by "going beyond the text", what do you mean?

(This, to be clear, is a question, not a suggestion.)
I haven't read Gottschalk but doesn't the section quoted actually point to the similarity of methods between a trial situation and historical research?
No. He of course see similarities, but the whole thrust of the passage is to point out the differences. For example, he notes that hearsay is excluded from criminal trials but acknowledges that hearsay may be used in historical investigations. He also points out that while falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus is often a standard in trials, it is not a good standard for historical research.
Historians also consider the character or bias of authors of various sources and the problematic nature of hearsay testimony.
Yes, absolutely. Historians ought to recognize the problematic nature of, for example, hearsay, even as they are judiciously using it in their arguments. This is in contradistinction to (American, at least) law courts, in which hearsay is strictly inadmissible.
(And contemporary eyewitness accounts are the most weighty of all -- both in trials and for historians.)
Agreed. But where no (contemporary/direct) eyewitnesses exist, historians do not throw up their hands and go home, again in contradistinction to how trials work. They still formulate hypotheses (often on the basis of secondary/indirect sources) and try to find clever ways of demonstrating their validity (using the "scientific method" described above by Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, among other methods).
Historians don't as a rule get away with treating all their sources as being of equal weight or validity.
Of course not! Weighing sources is huge. We ought not to pretend that the evidence for the personal life of Julius Caesar (including his own memoirs) is of the same nature as the evidence for the personal life of, say, Alexander the Great (nearly all, if not absolutely all, of which comes from secondary sources claiming to be based upon primary sources). We ought also to agree, however, that the disparity in quality between the two sets of evidence does not prevent historians of the Hellenistic period from mounting arguments about Alexander; they are free to evaluate the secondary sources and come to all kinds of conclusions about Alexander which are not as secure as conclusions about Julius Caesar. It is great when they acknowledge these difficulties with the sources, and for a lay readership they certainly ought to do so, but amongst themselves (in journals, for example) this kind of acknowledgement can be seen as superfluous.
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Re: Jesus's historicity: 1st & 2nd c. Historians

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Bernard Muller wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:32 pm
... historians are after history, they have to go deeper and beyond these texts, with various degree of confidence, because the available data might be far from perfect and complete.
MrMacSon wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:37 pm The key is other texts. Other contemporaneous texts, and subsequent texts.

The early Church Fathers show a lack of knowledge of a historical Jesus.

There were plenty of 1st and 2nd century historians or authors who might have mentioned early Christianity of Jesus of Nazareth, but didn't


The emperor Claudius (10bc - 54ad) was noted for writing a lot, such as a treatise on Augustus' religious reforms, and felt himself in a good position to institute some of his own. He had strong opinions about the proper form for state religion.
  • Claudius's major works included Tyrrhenica, a twenty book Etruscan history, and Carchedonica, an eight volume history of Carthage, as well as an Etruscan dictionary ... he penned a defense of Cicero against the charges of Asinius Gallus. Modern historians have used this to determine the nature of his politics and of the aborted chapters of his civil war history.
  • Seneca the Elder (d. ~39ad), a historian who noted various aspects of Claudius's attitudes to, & activities for & against, various religions
  • Suetonius quotes Claudius' autobiography once and must have used it as a source numerous times.
  • Tacitus uses Claudius' arguments for the orthographical innovations [the old custom of putting dots between successive words (Classical Latin was written with no spacing)] and may have used him for some of the more antiquarian passages in his Annals.
  • Pliny's used Claudius as the source for numerous passages in Natural History.


Servilius Nonianus (d. 59ad) wrote a book on the history of Rome, but this work has not been preserved: even its title is unknown. According to Tacitus and Quintilian, this work at their time was considered a very important Rome history reference book, especially for those historians who belonged to the Senatorial Party.



Cluvius Rufus (fl. 60s ad) Annales (at least to 67 AD)

Quintus Asconius Pedianus (c. 9 BC – c. AD 76)

Pliny the Elder (d. 79 AD.), On the German Wars, Annales



Pamphile or Pamphila of Epidaurus, Sth Greece (Greek: Παμφίλη η Επιδαύρια, Pamfíli i Epidávria; Latin: Pamphila; fl. ad 1st century), was a historian who lived in the reign of Nero. Her principle work was the Historical Commentaries, a history of Greece comprising thirty-three books. Photius considers the work as one of great use, and supplying important information on many points in history and literature. The estimation in which it was held in antiquity is shown not only by the judgement of Photius, but also by the references to it in the works of Aulus Gellius and Diogenes Laërtius, who appear to have availed themselves of it to a considerable extent.



Mucianus served as governor of Syria in 69AD and was the author of a memoir, chiefly dealing with the natural history and geography of the East, a text often quoted by Pliny the Elder as the source of 'miraculous occurrences'.



Josephus 37 ad - ~100 ad born in Jerusalem, then part of Roman Judea, son of Matthias, an ethnic Jewish Priest and a mother who claimed royal Hasmonean ancestry. Josephus's paternal grandparents were supposedly direct descendants of Simon Psellus, and he supposedlu descended through his father from the priestly order of the Jehoiarib, which was the first of the 24 orders of priests in the Temple in Jerusalem.

At the outbreak of the First Jewish-Roman War, Josephus was appointed the military Jewish governor of Galilee.

One would think Josephus would have known enough about early Christianity to write about it.



Plutarch (c. AD 46 – AD 120; later named, upon becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus, Λούκιος Μέστριος Πλούταρχος) was a Greek biographer and essayist, known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He is classified as a Middle Platonist. Plutarch's surviving works were written in Greek.



Tacitus c. 56 AD – c. 120 AD

Suetonius (c. 69 - after 122 AD) Lives of the Caesars

Florus (c. 70 - c. 140 ad?) 'Military history of Rome to Augustus' in 2 books




Thallus, via wikipedia (Greek: Θαλλός) was an early historian who wrote in Koine Greek. He [supposedly] wrote a three-volume history of the Mediterranean world from before the Trojan War to the 167th Olympiad, c. 112-109 BC. Most of his work, like the vast majority of ancient literature, has been lost, although some of his writings were [supposedly] quoted by Sextus Julius Africanus in his History of the World.

Thallus' works are considered important by some Christians because they believe them to confirm the historicity of Jesus and provide non-Christian validation of Gospel accounts. A reference to an eclipse, attributed to Thallus, has been taken as a mention of the worldwide darkness described in the Synoptic gospels account of the death of Jesus, although an eclipse could not have taken place during Passover .. (a common view in modern scholarship is that the crucifixion darkness is a literary creation rather than a historical event).
  • The 9th-century Christian chronologer George Syncellus cited Sextus Julius Africanus as writing in reference to the darkness mentioned in the synoptic gospels as occurring at the death of Jesus:
    • "On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his 'History', calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun."
    Africanus then pointed out that an eclipse cannot occur at Passover when the moon is full and therefore diametrically opposite the Sun.

and See https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Thallus
  • All of the works of Africanus are lost, so there is no way to confirm the reference or to examine its context. We have no idea who Thallus was, or when he wrote.

    Based on the Armenian translation of Eusebius (which preserves references not in the Greek version) one of his sources was ‘three volumes of Thallus, in which he made a summary in abbreviated fashion from the sack of Troy (1184 BCE) to the 167th Olympiad (which ended in July, 109 BCE)’. But to get this to fit the Jesus story one has to conclude the numerals in the Armenian translation are corrupt with many scholars claiming that the 167th Olympiad should really be either the 207th Olympiad (ending in July, 52 CE) or the 217th Olympiad (which ended in July, 92 CE),[3]

    [There are] four options: (i) Africanus meant Phlegon, not Thallus; or [ii] Eusebius quoted Thallus verbatim, revealing that Thallus did not mention Jesus; or [iii] Thallus mentioned Jesus, but wrote in the 2nd century, when we know the gospels were already in circulation; or [iv] Thallus mentioned Jesus and wrote in the 1st century, and is the earliest witness to the gospel tradition. Although all of these are possible, it is clear that any of the first three are more likely than the last one, since there are several facts which support each of them, but none which support the last one --in other words, it is a "mere" possibility, whereas the others actually have some arguments in their favor."[5]

    In a scholarly work Carrier concluded "The curtness and brevity of this line is also what would be expected from a treatise that covered the history of the entire world over the enormous course of twelve centuries in only three scrolls. Whereas, by contrast, refutation of claims made in the literature of obscure cults is what would not be expected from such a treatise, there being neither room nor purpose for such a thing. Therefore the Histories of Thallus probably contained no such thing. And from the evidence of Eusebius, we can be virtually certain that it did not. Therefore Thallus should be removed from lists of writers attesting to Jesus, and Thallus’s most probable floruit should be revised to the middle to late second century."

    Carrier, Richard (2011–12) "Thallus and the Darkness at Christ's Death" Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 8; 185-91

and http://www.doxa.ws/Jesus_pages/HistJesus5.html
  • "Thallus, a Samaritan-born historian who lived and worked in Rome about A.D. 52, wrote [about a] supernatural element [said to have] accompanied the crucifixion. Though the writings of Thallus are lost to us, Julius Africanus, a Christian chronographer of the late second century, was familiar with them and quotes from them. In a comment on the darkness that fell upon the land during the crucifixion (Mark 15:33), Africanus says that "Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun" [F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents, Eerdmens, p. 113.]. Africanus stated his objection to the report arguing that an eclipse of the sun cannot occur during the full moon, as was the case when Jesus died at Passover time. The force of the reference to Thallus is that the circumstances of Jesus' death were known and discussed in the Imperial City as early as the middle of the first century.

    Will Durant observed that Thallus' "argument took the existence of Christ for granted." [Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, Simon and Schuster, p. 555.] ... Durant summed up the matter of Christ's historical existence for himself by saying that it never occurred to the early opponents of Christianity to deny the existence of Jesus. [Ibid].


Granius Licinianus (fl. 120 ad?) History of Rome

Appian of Alexandria (c. 95 - c.165ad)
  • Roman History in 24 books
  • 'Roman wars from the beginnings to Trajan'
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:54 pm .... court trials and historical studies do not share the same standards of proof. I think we are in agreement here.
Historians have many different purposes. One is to describe, another to explain, another to raise questions, another to make judgements, another to "find facts" of a matter, etc.

When it comes to "fact-finding" I think as a rule they want "proofs" that will find acceptance among their peers. The Holocaust Denial trial is a good example of where historians do have occasion to establish proofs that meet legal standards.

The question of "proofs" comes up in the "history wars" we see in various countries where racial and religious questions still have contemporary impacts and historians become involved in providing proofs for one side or the other.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:54 pmTo be perfectly frank, I find your writing to be confusing at times,
Me, too, sometimes when I return and read something I wrote. I do tend to rush my comments here way too much. It's better probably to return to taking breaks from the scene rather than be too slap-dash.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:54 pm and I seek clarity. Another example follows here below....
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 5:51 pmMy point is that I believe we need to work with the Jesus we have, the Jesus on the pages of the texts, the textual Jesus. . . . That is the Jesus we need to explain. He is the only one a historian has to work with.

....

My point about the textual Jesus is that we cannot go beyond that. That little diagram of McGrath's graphically declaring that the historian needs to go beyond the texts is flawed. It is what sets biblical studies "historians" apart from historians in other fields. If historians of Julius Caesar studied "the historical Julius Caesar" in the sources the same way biblical scholars studied the historical Jesus in the sources they'd be considered crazy.
I find myself wondering what you mean by "going beyond the texts" in this context. In my example of Nero slaying his own mother, our evidence for this event comes strictly from texts. If an historian defends the idea that Nero really did, in the actual course of events in Roman times, commit matricide (based on the sifted testimony of those texts), is that historian going beyond the text, to use your term for it? Conversely, if an historian tends to doubt that Nero ever did such a thing, despite what all the texts say, is that historian going beyond the text in suggesting that all the texts are wrong about the actual events which lie (or do not lie) behind them? Or, if attempting to establish the reality of events behind (and leading up to) a text is not what you mean by "going beyond the text", what do you mean?
I mean pretty much the sin of criteriology. Using "criteria" to find out what came before the text we are reading, especially in some supposed oral phase. Establishing "genuine words or acts" behind the text by means of "embarrassment", "plausibility", "coherence", etc. As far as I am aware these question-begging or circular methods are unique to biblical studies and serve to reinforce the fundamental theological model contained within the texts themselves. [See end of post for elaboration on this comment.]

(As for questions such as "Did Nero murder his mother" I don't see any problem with historians saying "probably" or "it was believed" or "evidence that has survived indicates that" etc.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:54 pm
I haven't read Gottschalk but doesn't the section quoted actually point to the similarity of methods between a trial situation and historical research?
No. He of course see similarities, but the whole thrust of the passage is to point out the differences.
And differences there certainly are. But the extract also tells me that Gottschalk is aware that the historian needs to exercise similar cautions imposed upon judges, juries, etc. Obviously that all of these roles are bound up in a single individual can never be replicated in a real or fair courtroom. I guess peers become the opposing attorneys or supporting witnesses in the field of history.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:54 pm
Historians also consider the character or bias of authors of various sources and the problematic nature of hearsay testimony.
Yes, absolutely. Historians ought to recognize the problematic nature of, for example, hearsay, even as they are judiciously using it in their arguments. This is in contradistinction to (American, at least) law courts, in which hearsay is strictly inadmissible.
Historians are also known to reject hearsay, or at most to add it as an interesting footnote.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:54 pm
(And contemporary eyewitness accounts are the most weighty of all -- both in trials and for historians.)
Agreed. But where no (contemporary/direct) eyewitnesses exist, historians do not throw up their hands and go home, again in contradistinction to how trials work. They still formulate hypotheses (often on the basis of secondary/indirect sources) and try to find clever ways of demonstrating their validity (using the "scientific method" described above by Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier, among other methods).
This is the point at which this particular phase of the discussion in this thread began. Historians do not, when being professional, water down their standards either.

They learn to limit the sorts of questions they can ask; they work with the limits of the limited source material. They don't, as professionals, find "clever ways" to get more out of the sources than they normally could in any other circumstances. They do not resort to criteriology.

Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:54 pm We ought also to agree, however, that the disparity in quality between the two sets of evidence does not prevent historians of the Hellenistic period from mounting arguments about Alexander; they are free to evaluate the secondary sources and come to all kinds of conclusions about Alexander which are not as secure as conclusions about Julius Caesar. It is great when they acknowledge these difficulties with the sources, and for a lay readership they certainly ought to do so, but amongst themselves (in journals, for example) this kind of acknowledgement can be seen as superfluous.
The historical narratives about Alexander differ from those of Julius Caesar in the types of details and situations they address. There is a real difference in detailed studies of JC and A -- the differences are the consequence of the different quantities and types of sources that historians work with in each case.

The different quantities and qualities of sources in each case means historians are able to ask different sorts of questions. They can know much more about JC than A.

They do not lower their standards in the case of A in order to get as many words written about A as they can about JC, for example. They don't lower their standards at all for A but maintain the same rigour, (assuming professionals at their best, of course), and the result is a history of A that lacks much of the micro-detail we read in JC's life.

In other words, they limit the sorts of questions they ask according to the nature of the extant sources.

------------
Not only criteriology but now some scholars have moved into "memory theory" though they have distorted the original theory to make it work for the gospels in the way they want/need it to give them what they want behind the texts. Bauckham has distorted philosophical discussions on testimony to misapply the concept in a way to "get behind" the "testimony" supposedly in the gospels.
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

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Paul the Uncertain wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 1:41 am
a purported fact
There's a lot of that in investigations. The birth certificate may be somebody else's. Even somebody else in the same family - if a child dies, that name may be reused by the same parents for a later child, as in something I'm currently working on. Or it's just a coincidence of names, and in good faith, a genealogist matched the wrong one. That, too, happened on a key marriage record in this same case.
All very true, and such questions are addressed in guides to scholars about to undertake serious historical research. They are aware of the need to test documents for authenticity, for mistakes, and so forth.

But the point I was trying to make was that historians are limited in the sorts of information they can expect from sources, depending on the nature of the sources. If a document contains only the date of birth then it is pointless looking to it in order to see the date of death, or where the person spent their twenty-first birthday, etc. That's all I meant by saying we are limited by the nature of the sources as far as the sorts of questions we can meaningfully ask of them. I didn't think that would be a controversial statement.
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

Post by neilgodfrey »

Paul, you have spoken about bringing the methods of other fields into historical research, if I have understood you, so I was reminded of your point when I read the following today in The Philosophy of History by Mark Day:
The philosophical task, then, is to account for what I have called ‘historical reasoning’: the justification of historical claim by evidence that is at the heart of the historian’s enterprise. We have seen that one object or event provides evidence for another in so far as there is a worldly dependence of the right sort between those two objects or events. But how do historians find out about those connections, and how should those attempts themselves be described? In this chapter I present two approaches to evidential justification: Bayesianism (founded on the probabilistic theorem developed by the eighteenth-century Presbyterian minister and mathematician Thomas Bayes), and explanationism. Both are applied in other fields, notably in describing the inferences made by natural scientists, but are sufficiently flexible to provide promising guides to historical reasoning.
Bayesianism is common to an almost endless number of fields, as we see from the title of a book about the theorem by Sharon McGrayne, The Theory that would not die - how Bayes' rule cracked the enigma code, hunted down Russian submarines, & emerged triumphant from two centuries of controversy.

Carrier is not the only historian to value Bayesian reasoning. (And I do tend to roll my eyes at certain critics of Carrier who seem to think he doesn't know what he's doing with respect to Bayesian methods in historical research. I suspect there's a lot of personal animosity towards Carrier personally behind all of that nonsense. Other historians have had no problem with the application of Bayes. Or maybe critics are just hostile towards mythicism. Some have tried to badger me into rejecting Bayesian reasoning, too, but they have always stressed how clever and knowledgeable they are in mathematics and attempted to use intimidation and intellectual bullying rather than engage in a serious to-and-fro discussion.)
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

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neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:49 pm

We are addressing two different concepts in this thread. History is understood as explanatory or descriptive narrative. But there is also the understanding of history as getting basic facts right.

Court trials etc are of course different in many respects from historical research. Though there is one case where the two did come very close, and that was the Holocaust Denial trial of David Irving (more correctly the trial brought by Irving against Deborah Lipstadt.)

The basic principles of determining "raw facts" are the same in both and in probably most areas of life. Independent corroboration looms large. Provenance is a word that covers a wealth of "data" and it is also high on the list of importance.
FWIW.

a/ This was a civil trial for libel to be resolved on the balance of probability.
b/ Under English Law, (at least at the time), given that the statements made by Deborah Lipstadt about David Irving were clearly prima-facie defamatory, the burden of proof lay with the defendant to establish justification.

This made it very different either from a libel case in the USA or from a criminal trial in either jurisdiction.

Andrew Criddle
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neilgodfrey
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

Post by neilgodfrey »

andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Sep 16, 2017 2:45 am
neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:49 pm

We are addressing two different concepts in this thread. History is understood as explanatory or descriptive narrative. But there is also the understanding of history as getting basic facts right.

Court trials etc are of course different in many respects from historical research. Though there is one case where the two did come very close, and that was the Holocaust Denial trial of David Irving (more correctly the trial brought by Irving against Deborah Lipstadt.)

The basic principles of determining "raw facts" are the same in both and in probably most areas of life. Independent corroboration looms large. Provenance is a word that covers a wealth of "data" and it is also high on the list of importance.
FWIW.

a/ This was a civil trial for libel to be resolved on the balance of probability.
b/ Under English Law, (at least at the time), given that the statements made by Deborah Lipstadt about David Irving were clearly prima-facie defamatory, the burden of proof lay with the defendant to establish justification.

This made it very different either from a libel case in the USA or from a criminal trial in either jurisdiction.

Andrew Criddle
The trial judgement is online.

Probability in defamation case concerns what one believes the reading public would "probably" think of Irving as a result of reading Deborah Lipstadt's claims about him. Anticipating public responses to what is published of course must be assessed in terms of probability. The judgment at the end of the trial made this clear:
2.9 Of greater substance is the question of what interpretation readers would have placed upon the references to Irving in Lipstadt's book. The burden rests on Irving to establish that, as a matter of probability, the passages of which he complains are defamatory of him, that is, that the ordinary reasonable reader of Denying the Holocaust would think the worse of him as a result of reading those passages. Irving is further required, as a matter of practice, to spell out what he contends are the specific defamatory meanings borne by those passages.
But it was necessary in the trial to be able to establish that Holocaust denial was a falsehood and for this proof of the Holocaust (and proof that it was intended/planned by the Nazi regime/Hitler) was required. You can read the submission to the court by expert witness historian Richard Evans at http://www.phdn.org/negation/irving/EvansReport.pdf.

The judgment concludes with statements of proof:
13.167 The answer to that question requires me to decide whether (I am paraphrasing section 5 of the Defamation Act 1952) the failure on the part of the Defendants to prove the truth of those charges materially injures the reputation of Irving, in view of the fact that the other defamatory charges made against him have been proved to be justified. The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism. In my judgment the charges against Irving which have been proved to be true are of sufficient gravity for it be clear that the failure to prove the truth of the matters set out in paragraph. 13.165 above does not have any material effect on Irving's reputation.
--------------------
Added later:

Why "proof" and not "probability"? Probability is to be strong enough that it constitutes proof:
4.10 The standard of proof in civil cases is normally that parties must prove their claims or defences, as the case may be, on the balance of probabilities. In the present case Irving argued, however, that, since the imputations against him were so grave, a higher standard of proof should be applied to the case of the justification advanced by the Defendants. There is a line of authority which establishes that, whilst the standard of proof remains the civil standard, the more serious the allegation the less likely it is that the event occurred and hence the stronger should be the evidence before the court concludes that the allegation is established on the balance of probability.30 I will adopt that approach when deciding if the truth of the defamatory imputations made against Irving has been established.
But I think the facts of the Holocaust and Nazi regime intent themselves were established as facts in Evans' report.
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Neil
This is the point at which this particular phase of the discussion in this thread began. Historians do not, when being professional, water down their standards either.
Great. But when the evidence gets thin, some norms counsel adjusting confidence in the conclusions, not limiting or restricting the range of admissible questions. Each individual or group decides for themself what questions they personally work on, but the menu from which they choose is defined solely by what is well-posed.
They are aware of the need to test documents for authenticity, for mistakes, and so forth.
There was nothing wrong, so far as I know, with any of the documents I discussed and which appear in your quote box.

As for "testing" those documents, my subject died in 1790. The local courthouse burned down in 1827, and what little survived is extant only in transcription. The transcriptionist candidly swore that she did the best she could to be accurate, lol. The local church didn't record births, deaths or marriages (but its records contain information about some of them). It burned in 1905, destroying some grave markers in the adjoining cemetery, where my subject rests.

My "awareness" of the "need to test" is basically worthless. I am lucky to have any reports at all. What holds the wall together is the dependencies among the reports, not their individual testability, which is about nil.

Beginners' manuals are great for beginners, though. Everybody has to start somewhere, and Fantasyland is a popular jumping-off point.
I didn't think that would be a controversial statement.
The controversy was news to me, too.

Round Two

Interesting looking book; thanks for the pointer.
Carrier is not the only historian to value Bayesian reasoning.
Oh, I agree, but his arguments seem to be especially well-known hereabouts. When in Rome, etc.
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Re: The best case for Jesus's historicity: Mark Craig

Post by Ben C. Smith »

neilgodfrey wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 7:35 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2017 6:54 pmTo be perfectly frank, I find your writing to be confusing at times,
Me, too, sometimes when I return and read something I wrote. I do tend to rush my comments here way too much. It's better probably to return to taking breaks from the scene rather than be too slap-dash.
There may be something to this, since I find your articles on Vridar to be very clear and informative.

The rest of what you wrote I am still considering. I definitely sympathize with your critique of what you call criteriology, though I think a lot of what have been called criteria can serve a purpose (not necessarily the purpose to which many biblical scholars put them). I may or may not get back to you on that. Thanks again for clarifying.
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