Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Secret Alias
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Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

Post by Secret Alias »

I can see disliking some or all of the prominent mythicists in the world. I can see thinking, feeling, believing, suspecting, wanting Jesus to be a historical person but in recent Facebook discussions that I have seen about Richard Carrier and what an odious character he is etc many of the prominent academics are absolutely certain that Jesus existed. I find this more ridiculous than the frequent attempts of mythicists to act as if the case for a non-existent Jesus is a slam dunk.

What accounts for their certainty? The only 'professional' academic who seemed to stand up for mythicism (and Carrier for that matter) was the Canadian Zeba Crook http://http-server.carleton.ca/~zcrook/ Crook as you may remember debated Carrier and actually treated him fairly respectfully. I am absolutely and unapologetically agnostic about the existence of Jesus. What accounts for inability to see the 'slam dunk' here? They keep ridiculing Carrier not having 'kept up' with the breadth of 'historical Jesus studies.' But really - I sometimes get the feeling that people publish just to force their adversaries to 'keep up' with new things published.

Is there anything 'new' or deep or interesting or even worth reading in this field? I don't see how you can prove Jesus didn't exist. I don't see how you can prove he existed. The main difference is Marcion. If you think Marcionism was truer to the original Pauline Christianity then you can make a case that Paul's Jesus was supernatural, wholly extra-terrestrial. As with Simon in the Pseudo-Clementines he created 'by vision.' What is there beyond Paul that is certain in early Christianity? I guess I am stupid or something because I don't get it.
Last edited by Secret Alias on Wed Oct 25, 2017 9:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

Post by 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.

So we have those two texts. We have them apparently writing about the same person as a person who actually lived. What best explains this? In my view, the best explanation is that that person really existed. It is by far the best explanation that is out there, in my non-expert amateur opinion. Of course, people have posited a whole range of views on what the texts are, when they were written, etc, and fair enough too. But none of those explanations seem to provide as strong a case.

You could argue that neither Paul and the author of GMark met Jesus. Fair enough. You could argue we don't know FOR SURE when the items were written and by whom. Fair enough. But at the end of the day you still have those two texts, with trying to find an explanation about what best explains why they exist. That's the question. I'll go back to the Internet Infidel article by Lowder on the Secular Web (my bolding below): https://infidels.org/library/modern/jef ... dconf.html
... independent confirmation is not necessary to establish the mere existence of the Jesus of the New Testament. There simply is nothing epistemically improbable about the mere existence of a man named Jesus. (Just because Jesus existed does not mean that he was born of a virgin, that he rose from the dead, etc.) Although a discussion of the New Testament evidence is beyond the scope of this paper, I think that the New Testament does provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. It is clear, then, that if we are going to apply to the New Testament "the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material,"[19] we should not require independent confirmation of the New Testament's claim that Jesus existed.
Paul and GMark do indeed provide prima facie evidence for the historicity of Jesus. I don't see how that can be denied. A mythicist case may overthrow that prima facie conclusion, but I just haven't seen one that does. In the absence of such a case, the 'bare bones' historicist argument wins AFAICS.
It is really important, in life, to concentrate our minds on our enthusiasms, not on our dislikes. -- Roger Pearse
Secret Alias
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

Post by Secret Alias »

Why do we have to frame the discussion in terms of Paul "not meeting" Jesus? Maybe Jesus began and ended with Paul's vision.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Secret Alias
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

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I don't see how that can be denied
If you ignore the Pauline tradition Irenaeus et al tell us to ignore. Sure. I get very frustrated with simple minded definitions of Paul. It's like defining Bill Cosby by the character presented to us in Jello commercials and the Cosby show. Sure I'd let my daughter go to that man's apartment for a drink.
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Secret Alias
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

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And church people are always asked to "believe in Jesus." I think this latest assault against mythicism - the claim that the historicity of Jesus is certain or near certain - is pushed over the finish line as a new "post-modern faith." Believing in the resurrection is unscientific because people and things don't resurrect but people do live and breathe and have flesh. It's a faith that sounds scientific because it's so perfectly banal. But is there real evidence for it? Hmmmm. I can't say with any certainty he didn't exist but he might well have been the protagonist in an amalgation of the Akeda, Psalm 22 and other Biblical bits and mysticism written for the post-70 CE Jewish world. Justus of Tiberias could have written it, his patron Agrippa, Philo or a host of other Hellenized Jews. How this book makes its way to Irenaeus a hundred years later in bastardized form could well be an ancient Canticle for Leibowitz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canti ... _Leibowitz
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MrMacSon
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

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If we look at the earliest texts -- Paul and GMark -- then we see some agreements between them. GMark and Paul appear to have written about the same character, with both texts apparently presenting that character as real, and the audience by all accounts treating those texts as if that character was a real person.

Given what we think we know about those texts; that they are likely to have been written in different sects (one Jewish-Gnostic-Christian and the other Gentile-Gnostic) and later redacted to be be about the same character, that is enough IMO to establish low confidence in 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. 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.
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

Post by Giuseppe »

Frankly, i think that the historicity of Jesus is reduced to the question of historicity of Paul. If Paul didn't exist, then the his epistles can't be used as evidence against the historical Jesus, hence the absolute Jesus agnosticism would be fully justified.

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.

Carrier's merit is only to prove that you can read Paul with anti-marcionite (and anti-gnostic) lens and still to see him as evidence against the Historical Jesus.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

Post by GakuseiDon »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 10:01 pm And church people are always asked to "believe in Jesus."
Yes, but that is "believe in Jesus as Lord", not "believe in Jesus as a historical person." At least, not yet.
Secret Alias wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 10:01 pm I can't say with any certainty he didn't exist but he might well have been the protagonist in an amalgation of the Akeda, Psalm 22 and other Biblical bits and mysticism written for the post-70 CE Jewish world.
That mixes two questions that unfortunately get confused in arguments about historicity: (1) Was there a historical Jesus? (2) How much can we uncover with any confidence about what he said and did? I think we can answer the first question with some certainty while leaving the second one open.
Last edited by GakuseiDon on Thu Oct 26, 2017 12:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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GakuseiDon
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

Post by GakuseiDon »

Giuseppe wrote: Thu Oct 26, 2017 12:22 amBut 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?
It is really important, in life, to concentrate our minds on our enthusiasms, not on our dislikes. -- Roger Pearse
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Why Are Historicists So Certain That Jesus Existed?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

GakuseiDon wrote: Wed Oct 25, 2017 8:33 pm 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?
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