Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

[Giuseppe]

But if Paul existed, and he wrote the epistles, then the silence of Paul + other authors about the historical Jesus is for me conclusive evidence of mythicism.

I've been thinking about making a thread on this topic, but I'll ask it here: Which epistles in the NT (so not counting the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles) discuss the historical Jesus in the way that you'd expect Paul to have done? And if there are none, how would that affect what we'd expect to see in Paul?

I don't understand how other epistles (for example, Hebrews) in the NT talk or ''discuss'' about the historical Jesus. I was alluding only to the fact that the 200 silent passages (documented by Earl Doherty) where Paul (and Hebrews) would have to discuss about the historical Jesus but he didn't is sufficient evidence against the historical Jesus.

To reply that the Argument from Silence is not conclusive on Paul and Hebrews is equivalent to assume the possibility of a historical Jesus for the author of the epistles. To assume that possibility means ipso facto to assume a Paul who was distant from any memory about the historical Jesus, a Paul so distant indeed that he becomes not different from a pseudo-''Paul'' writing under the name of the apostle 100 years after the presumed events. This is why I may be really mythicist beyond any doubt even about what I really believe if I had complete confirmation of the authenticity of the pauline epistles.

EDIT: In other terms, my ''paradox'' is that if we should discover a day a manuscript by Josephus himself where he talks about someone named Paul who wrote some epistles, then that discovery would be equivalent to a complete proof against the historical Jesus.

[Secret Alias]

This completely depends upon a certain degree of textual integrity in the Pauline corpus, right?

Finalmente! Un uomo di discernimento e di giudizio posato. Why does this escape so many historicists? How can they possibly be so certain that there was a historical Jesus from Paul when (a) the earliest Fathers alert us to a wholly different Pauline canon with large (controversial) pieces of our present edition missing within the letters and (b) where these lacunas are connected with traditions that put forward a wholly supernatural Jesus? I think the weakness in Doherty's approach is that he misses this understanding and any attempt to nail down 'Paul' will necessarily fail with respect to a non-historical (= visionary) Jesus figure. We simply don't know and can't know what the canon of the Marcionite tradition looked like, how it supported their supernatural Jesus or Christ (we don't even know who was the supernatural figure Jesus or Christ)!

I am open to a historical Jesus. It still is a possibility just as a wholly made up Jesus and/or Christ is a possibility. I am not so prone to certainty that I would venture a guess either way. There just isn't enough information to furnish certainty. That's my point. And my bit about 'having faith in Jesus.' Faith is dead in the modern world. It's almost a bad word. So my point, GD, was that I see these historicists as redefining faith as something 'scientific sounding' - i.e. 'of course Jesus was a man of flesh and blood, that's only reasonable, that's only scientific.' But science is only possible based on good evidence and the present canon isn't 'good evidence.' It's just the evidence which emerged at the end of the second century after a purge of all the bad traditions which supported their bad beliefs with must have been regarded as a bad, spurious canon. I'd like to get my hands on that bad spurious canon before I commit to whether Jesus was historical or not. I think everyone has to hold judgement until then.

[Giuseppe]

I think the weakness in Doherty's approach is that he misses this understanding and any attempt to nail down 'Paul' will necessarily fail with respect to a non-historical (= visionary) Jesus figure.

Why weakness?

I see Doherty as someone so patient, kind and well disposed towards historicists to the point of taking their word for truth on the absolute integrity and Jewishness of Paul (i.e. his essential monotheism), and refute them on their own ground.

Does Secret Alias know historicists who are going to confute him about Jesus on the his assumptions about Paul (that he was a marcionite ditheist, etc) ?

Does prof Price know historicists who are going to confute his mythicism on the his same assumptions that the historical Paul was Simon Magus?

I don't hear about these historicists: probably they never exist.

[Secret Alias]

But intention has nothing to do with it. You have rise about emotions and see that the problem of the historicity of Jesus is insoluble. You can't take the present canon and act as if it were hermetically sealed from the time of its original composition. The Christians were the WORST sorts of caretakers of books. The writings of Paul were corrupted and likely corrupted many times ... and worst yet, corrupted in a deliberate systematic way to reinforce a particular theology or christology. It is funny how you keep writing about this or that related to Marcion but the actual information doesn't seem to penetrate your head. The more you argue for Marcion the more you argue against any certainty. Marcion isn't a known commodity. You can't summon Marcion like Rumpelstiltskin. Just saying his name or 'trying' to reconstruct his canon doesn't bring Marcion or his canon back. Once you take the corruptions of the Pauline canon seriously you end up giving up on proving anything. It's impossible. And how do you know that the existing canon is 'authentic' - what is it an 'authentic' representation of? Paul? Did Paul only write one recension of his letters? How is that proved? Against Marcion speaks of at least three versions of Against Marcion circulating in the general public domain. How do you prove that Paul wrote THESE letters in the way they are preserved? Were Paul's letters corrected, manipulated by later editors? Of course they were. That is universally acknowledged. The question is whether the Marcionites or the orthodox preserved the letters 'in the right way.' But how is that resolved? I suppose you have to accept them in the form that they are current preserved in order to have a contest and a 'winner.' But what's the win here? Do you really want to stake the historicity of Jesus on THIS EDITION of the letters of Paul? Why? Is that because you want to have a winner crowned or because the evidence (the letters of Paul) are so certainly Paul's letters? I don't think the historical Paul wrote a sixteen chapter letter to the Romans? No I don't. I don't think 'Clement' wrote a fifty sixty chapter letter to the Corinthians. No I don't. Corruption was rampant in early Christianity. Willful, systematic, targeted corruption of earlier generations of scriptures was the rule not the exception.

[Secret Alias]

More I don't knows. I don't know that 1 Clement is really more 'authentic' than 2 Clement. I actually tend to view things the other way around. I am not sure that the Pastoral Epistles are universally 'falsified.' There might be bits and pieces of 'authentic Paul' embedded in the text - problematic sayings that the forgery was built around and designed to correct. Every step along the way I pause and say to myself - I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't how certain we can be about any of this. You know what Nietzsche said, 'Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty.'

[GakuseiDon]

My view: If there was a historical Jesus, we can't really know much about him, to the point that he may as well have not existed. But if we look at the earliest texts -- Paul and GMark -- then we see some agreements between them. Given what we think we know about those texts, that is enough IMO to establish with high confidence the historicity of a Jewish man later known as Jesus Christ, Son of God, seed of David, who was crucified in the first half of the First Century, but not much more beyond that.

GMark and Paul are writing about the same person, and writing within a short time frame after that person apparently lived, with both texts apparently being treated as presenting that person as real, and the audience by all accounts treating those texts in that way.

This completely depends upon a certain degree of textual integrity in the Pauline corpus, right?

Yes. That is, that the seven epistles usually attributed to Paul were written by that one person.

[GakuseiDon]

But if Paul existed, and he wrote the epistles, then the silence of Paul + other authors about the historical Jesus is for me conclusive evidence of mythicism.

I've been thinking about making a thread on this topic, but I'll ask it here: Which epistles in the NT (so not counting the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles) discuss the historical Jesus in the way that you'd expect Paul to have done? And if there are none, how would that affect what we'd expect to see in Paul?

I don't understand how other epistles (for example, Hebrews) in the NT talk or ''discuss'' about the historical Jesus. I was alluding only to the fact that the 200 silent passages (documented by Earl Doherty) where Paul (and Hebrews) would have to discuss about the historical Jesus but he didn't is sufficient evidence against the historical Jesus.

Sure, I can understand that approach. But, as I argued often with Doherty and others who emphasized the silence in Paul, it is ignoring what we see in the wider literature. If you see the same kind of silence throughout early literature, then that needs to be taken into account.

When Graham Stanton looked at GA Wells' use of the silence in Paul to build his case, Stanton basically shrugged and said "So what?" He noted that precise historical and chronological references are few and far between also in the numerous Jewish writings discovered in the caves around the Dead Sea near Qumran. [Stanton, G; "The Gospels and Jesus", Second Edition, Oxford Bible Series, 2002, page 144]

Doherty himself notes in his "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man" that there is a strange silence in the Second Century apologists writing to pagans on the historical Jesus that can be compared to the First Century epistle writers:

As one can see by this survey, if one leaves aside Justin Martyr there is a silence in the 2nd Century apologists on the subject of the historical Jesus which is virtually equal of that found in the 1st century epistle writers. (Page 485)

Another aspect is the fact that in almost all the apologists we find a total lack of a sense of history. They do not talk of their religion as an ongoing movement with a specific century of development behind it, through a beginning in time, place and circumstances, and a spread in similar specifics. Some of them pronounce it to be very "old" and they look back to roots in the Jewish prophets rather than to the life of a recent historical Jesus. In this, of course, they are much like the 1st century epistle writers. (Page 477)

For Doherty, the reason for the similarity is simple: both groups didn't have a historical Jesus at their core. But if we conclude the Second Century writers did have a historical Jesus in sight, how would that set the expectations for what we see in the First Century epistle writers? I'm not saying that both groups had the same reasons for writing the way they did; only that when you look at the wider literature, Paul's silence doesn't appear to be so unique.

Having read early Christian literature multiple times (in English translation), I don't see Paul's silence as unique. I can't explain it, as I can't explain why they left out precise historical and chronological references (not just on a historical Jesus, but on so much more) in so much of the early literature. But I don't see that as trumping what Paul DOES write regarding Jesus as coming from the Jews, being the seed of David, etc.

[Blood]

They're certain Jesus existed because the alternative would apparently crush their little feelings and make them feel like they've wasted their time. Which just shows how emotional and immature the entire field is. As a species, we should be well beyond the need to "prove" miracles happened in the middle east (or anywhere) thousands of years ago.

[MrMacSon]

Doherty himself notes in his "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man" that there is a strange silence in the Second Century apologists writing to pagans on the historical Jesus that can be compared to the First Century epistle writers:

Another aspect is the fact that in almost all the apologists we find a total lack of a sense of history. They do not talk of their religion as an ongoing movement with a specific century of development behind it, through a beginning in time, place and circumstances, and a spread in similar specifics.

Some of them pronounce it to be very "old" and they look back to roots in the Jewish prophets rather than to the life of a recent historical Jesus¹. In this, of course, they are much like the 1st century epistle writers. (Page 477)

---

As one can see by this survey, if one leaves aside Justin Martyr there is a silence in the 2nd Century apologists on the subject of the historical Jesus which is virtually equal of that found in the 1st century epistle writers. (Page 485)
.

For Doherty, the reason for the similarity is simple: both groups didn't have a historical Jesus at their core.

¹ Which suggests the NT Jesus is a re-write of Jewish figures.

...what Paul does write regarding Jesus [is] coming from the Jews, being the seed of David, etc.

is part of the same theme.
.

[Bernard Muller]

Historicists like me do not claim Jesus made miracles. Likely credited of some successful healing, but that's no different of modern healers from various faiths (and others at any centuries) credited to have healed people.
Paul (in 1 Corinthians 12) wrote there were healers among his Christians of Corinth, but put the healing "gifts" into the lowest category among other gifts.

Cordially, Bernard