Does anyone have On the Historicity of Jesus yet?

[neilgodfrey]

^Where did I make a knowledge claim?

If you are asking about my comment that your point is based on a presumed knowledge of the mind of Tacitus, I made that comment in response to your statement of what Tacitus "would have" written or not have written.

If we are going to argue that he "would have" said X then we need to base that on the evidence of his writings elsewhere. Even then, we have an argument that can never be completely certain.

[toejam]

^Look, my point is simply that Carrier's attempts to dismiss Tacitus' reference off the table completely aren't very convincing to me. I haven't finished OHJ yet, but I don't think he includes Tacitus in his final Bayes Theorem calculation. And if not, that's suspicious to me, because even if it is established that Tacitus' reference is "likely" to have come from Pliny (and that's not established IMO), it still deserves at least some points within his calculation on the "unlikely" chance that wasn't his only source.

At the end of the day, what do we have? Tacitus evidently acknowledged Jesus as a historical figure. Notice how he doesn't say that Christianity started from a euhemerization of a revelatory being or an allegorical fiction? He says the religion was a superstition. But he doesn't say its crucified instigator was a superstition... Like I said, if Christianity had never taken off and this is all we had... no one today would question it.

[neilgodfrey]

^Look, my point is simply that Carrier's attempts to dismiss Tacitus' reference off the table completely aren't very convincing to me. I haven't finished OHJ yet, but I don't think he includes Tacitus in his final Bayes Theorem calculation. And if not, that's suspicious to me, because even if Tacitus' reference is "likely" to have come from Pliny, it deserves some points within his calculation on the "unlikely" chance that wasn't his only source. Tacitus evidently acknowledged Jesus as a historical figure. Notice how he doesn't say that Christianity started from a euhemerization of a revelatory being or an allegorical fiction? He says the religion was a superstition. But he doesn't say Jesus himself was a superstition... Like I said, if Christianity had never taken off and this is all we had... no one today would question it.

I fully grant you are not convinced. No argument.

But I cannot agree that we would somehow give a priori credence to the claim of Tacitus as an independent witness to the origins of Christianity if Christianity had never taken off. That would be to interpret Tacitus as if he were working on the same principles and practices as we would expect of modern historians.

There are genuine methodological grounds for not accepting Tacitus's evidence as secure. It makes no difference if Christianity took off or not.

But here is where I do not follow you. You agree on the one hand that the evidence is not secure but then seem to be saying that we would accept it as fact if we were not somehow engaging with Christianity today, thus treating as if it were secure in another circumstance.

[toejam]

^The point about Christianity not taking off is not evidence, only pointing out potential inconsistencies in the way we use ancient sources. I'm not saying you should accept it. I just hope you're consistent in not accepting a whole lot of other stuff that we only have minimal references for. History is not the past, but our best attempt to reconstruct it. And when all the sources, regardless of their biases, are saying that there was a historical figure, then I think the most reasonable reconstruction is that there was...

[lpetrich]

Another way of putting Bayes' Theorem used with Lord Raglan's score or something similar is:

For hypothesis X and score S:
P(X if S) = P(S if X) * P(X) / P(S)

P(S if X) = N(S)/N(total) -- it doesn't matter how many real ones or mythical ones you work from. It will still work even if you had worked from 100 real people and 10 mythical people . Those total numbers won't skew the results, though they will affect the statistical quality of those results.

P(X) is the prior probability of hypothesis X.

P(S) is a normalization factor.

I'll work out a numerical example.

Let's say that we score 100 mythical heroes and find that 10 score less than 12, and likewise that we score 1000 real heroes and find that 10 score at least 12. Then,

P(S >= 12 if mythical) = 0.9
P(S < 12 if mythical) = 0.1
P(S >= 12 if real) = 0.01
P(S < 12 if real) = 0.99

Then,
P(mythical if S >= 12)/P(real if S >= 12) = 90 * P(mythical)/P(real)
P(real if S < 12)/P(mythical if S < 12) = 9.9 * P(real)/P(mythical)

So unless P(mythical) <~ 0.01, P(mythical if S >= 12) will be very close to 1.

[Adam]

Carrier, OHJ, pp582-592, on Brother of the Lord
Part2
"Here I believe this is another Active kinship title, not a reference to James literally being the brother of Christ.96 We've already seen how Paul can use the phrase 'brother of the Lord' to mean Christian, since all Christians were brothers of the Lord, and why Paul would have needed to be more specific if he meant 'brother of the Lord' by birth and not adoption. So here he may be simply saying the same thing, that James was a fellow brother in Christ. Indeed. Paul goes on to say that this James (unless he means a different one) was one of the three pillars of highest repute in the church, 'James and Cephas and John' (Gal. 2.9). The Gospels imagine these three as disciples, not the family of Jesus. In fact, the Gospels uniformly report that this James and John were the brothers of each other, not of Jesus.97 Might Paul have only known them as such, too?

"Certainly in Gal. 1.19 Paul meant either James the Pillar or another James. And if he meant James the Pillar, then he did not mean he was liter­ally the brother of Jesus—as that James appears to have been the brother of John, not Jesus. So to maintain that Paul means this James was the literal brother of Jesus, you have to conclude that Paul meant a different James in 1.19 than the one he mentions soon afterward (in Gal. 2.9 and 2.12). But that means whichever James he is speaking of in 1.19 might not have been an apostle at all. And that means Paul may be using 'brother of the Lord' yet again to distinguish apostles from other Christians, and not to identify the family of Jesus.
...

'Thank you, Kapyong,
For your exacting editing of a copyable hunk of Carrier's 600+ pages.
Carrier exactingly mines the Pauline epistles for his argument that comes out diametrically opposed to James Tabor's The Jesus Dynasty. Tabor has Jesus setting up a legitimate succession to at least his two brothers. Carrier comes out with the brothers of the Lord being every Christian NOT apostles. None of his earthly brothers followed him, even after Jesus died, according to Carrier. Hand it to Carrier that he painstakingly explains every Pauline reference to fit his case that Christianity was a equalitarian brotherhood among at least the ranks of the committed. Carrier takes advantage of Protestant prejudices here that Jesus did in fact have earthly brothers by blood. Roman Catholics, of course, deny that this James (or any other contemporary) was actually related by blood to Jesus.

I find Carrier's convoluted theory here to show his admirable debating skills overwhelming stubborn facts that he can make fit.

[neilgodfrey]

^The point about Christianity not taking off is not evidence, only pointing out potential inconsistencies in the way we use ancient sources. I'm not saying you should accept it. I just hope you're consistent in not accepting a whole lot of other stuff that we only have minimal references for. History is not the past, but our best attempt to reconstruct it. And when all the sources, regardless of their biases, are saying that there was a historical figure, then I think the most reasonable reconstruction is that there was...

I believe I do try to be consistent in "not accepting a whole lot of other stuff that we only have minimal references for." But "not accepting" does not always imply "rejecting". It is quite okay to say we "don't know" about many figures in the ancient sources.

But in evaluating any data in any ancient historical work is not just a matter of sifting through bias. We do know for a fact that ancient historians did not work the same way as modern historians. We know for a fact that they felt quite at liberty at times to fabricate information if they felt such fabrications explained how it "must have been" in the absence of any evidence. We also know they often imitated the poets. Homer himself was considered a "historian" by ancients. We also know Tacitus was prone to report gossip a generation or more after the event as fact when it suited him. We also know that manuscripts were more likely, rather than less likely, to suffer corruption from editorial or copyists changes and emendations and interpolations (sometimes accidental) rather than less likely in the course of their transmission to us. Even ancient authors complained about writings being changed by copyists.

So given all of this sort of thing it is foolish to naively take for granted anything one reads in an ancient historian's work. There are methods by which we can have more confidence in some details than in others. But I've covered that topic more times than I or others can count now.

Entertainment and moral education were stronger interests of ancient historians than giving an account of the past that was accurate by our standards.

We make a serious mistake if we read and make assumptions about the works of ancient historians in the same way we do of modern historians. To treat them as equals is to do modern historians a serious injustice. It can even be argued that ancient histories were not historical works at all by modern standards.

[MrMacSon]

For me, Tacitus' reference remains on the table. Is it secure? Nope. But can it be as easily dismissed as Carrier seems to imply here. Nope. At the end of the day, it remains the kind of thing we might expect had their been a historical figure: his acknowledgement in the writings of the great historians of the time.

Yes, that's right. Assuming the Tacitus account is genuine, it becomes data in a cumulative case. Whatever one's theory, it needs to account for what Christians were believing around 110 CE.

Tacitus's account is not 'data': data is objective, measured observations, as in numbers. Tacitus's account is not evidence, either: certainly not evidence of or for Jesus of Nazareth.

Tacitus's account is information that begs questions: where did he get the information from? what does it mean?

Carrier's speculation he got it from Pliny the Younger seems spurious; disingenuous, even.

If Tacitus had referred to Christians believing in a celestial crucified Christ, and a historicist wrote off the reference as "Oh that's just what Christians believed at the time -- it doesn't count towards historicity or ahistoricity", I think that would be questioned.

Does it matter who said "Oh that's just what Christians believed at the time -- it doesn't count towards historicity or ahistoricity"?

Does it matter if they are a historicist, an a historicist, or a mythicist?

Regardless of whether one prefers a historicist or ahistoricist model, the Tacitus reference is an interesting data point in the growth of early Christianity.

It's not a data point.

If the Tacitus references to 'Chrestianos' or 'Chrestus/Christus' are later interpolations, then there may not have been distinct "Christians' ~110 AD/CE.

[maryhelena]

<snip>

If the Tacitus references to 'Chrestianos' or 'Chrestus/Christus' are later interpolations, then there may not have been distinct "Christians' ~110 AD/CE.

Well now, Tertullian says the name 'Christians' was already in use during the reign of Augustus.......

This name of ours took its rise in the reign of Augustus; under Tiberius it was taught with all clearness and publicity; under Nero it was ruthlessly condemned,

TERTULLIAN

AD NATIONES.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/t ... ian06.html

Melito of Sardis: From the apology addressed to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. (d.160 c.e.)

For the philosophy current with us flourished in the first instance among barbarians; and, when it afterwards sprang up among the nations under thy rule, during the distinguished reign of thy ancestor Augustus, it proved to be a blessing of most happy omen to thy empire.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/ANF-08/anf08-164.htm

[MrMacSon]

Well now, Tertullian says the name 'Christians' was already in use during the reign of Augustus.......

The english translation might be 'Christians', but what was the original? - Was it 'Chrestian/os'?

I have seen assertions that all references pre-4th C were Chrestian/Chrestus, including Codex Sinaiticus.

To what extent is all or any of Tertulian's writings considered authentic?