How did early Christian texts just go missing?

[Michael BG]

It was actually quite common for trusted slaves to be sent abroad by their masters in order to carry out tasks for their master. …

Andrew Criddle

I did have the impression that trusted slaves could and did travel, but I don’t think they could travel where-ever they wished without the permission of their masters, which was the point I was making. A Christian slave in Rome in 80 CE could not just travel to Palestine if the mood took them.

In the early Roman Empire city dwellers were probably quite mobile.

Slaves may have been mobile, people under legal bans and foreigners also, but on what evidence would you generalize to city dwellers as a whole?

Labour Mobility in the Roman World may be of interest. (It is primarily about mine workers but discusses broader issues).

Andrew Criddle

The paper has a small sample and it is discussing movement for work and includes re-settlement. It also states it findings must “remain tentative” (first sentence last paragraph). It seems likely that poor free people would move to where there was more work, away from areas where work had become scarce to areas being developed. Claire Holleran points out this movement was largely regional and it is not clear if the journey was made in stages or not. This does not mean that large numbers could travel where they wanted across the Roman Empire for the purpose of chatting with people which is the situation that Rakovsky was imagining.

You ask:

My point was that a woman in the past would have a greater chance of dying in adulthood than a Muslim scholar of the Middle Ages. Do you understand that women as adults had a greater chance of dying because of child-birth than adult men?

That would make sense.

I am glad you understand this.

I have this idea that the first pregnancy has a higher likelihood of the death of the mother than later ones and women who give birth after the age of 40 are more likely to die than younger women.

I did inform you that I did understand about life expectancy and it was implied in the original comment.

I pointed out a life expectancy average of 30 and 35.
I pointed out that with this average life expectancy few people would live past the age of 54 (reached in 50 CE).''

Hello, Michael. My question is not whether you believe you understand what life expectancy means, but whether you understand the reasons why statisticians say that life expectancy that factors in infant mortality rates is very misleading.

When one says that few out of all people live past 54 if the life expectancy is 30, then that statement is misleading, because it doesn't distinguish between people who reach adult hood and those who don't. Judeans who reached adulthood and knew Mary's background would have a much longer lifespan that all people, which would include children who didn't.

I told you that medieval Islamic scholars live to 80, and you didn't like that statistic because we are talking about average women.
Same thing here. We are not talking about all life expectancy, but life expectancy for adults, which is drastically different because of the infant mortality factor.

With an average age of 35 and expecting half of people to die at 12 the rest would all die at 47. We could have a quarter die at 6, a quarter die at 15, a quarter die at 47 and a quarter die at 72. Therefore most (3 out of 4) people would die in this example before they were 54.

You are underfactoring infant mortality and creating very high mortality of teenagers, who tend to be healthier than other ages.

See the BBC article:

For example, if we consult wonderful resources such as the Human Mortality Database, we find that back in 1841 (the first year we have data for), 31% of children born in England and Wales died before they were 16, but if you did survive there was nearly a 50% chance of reaching 64.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2012041 ... -and-death

(While these claims are possible I don’t think the data is there for this claim. How do we know how many children died before 1841? How do we know that half of those who were 17 in 1841 reached 64 in 1888 when the censuses were in 1881 and 1891? It reads that the author got his information from the Human Mortality Database (http://www.mortality.org/cgi-bin/hmd/co ... BR&level=2) but the information only starts in 1922. There is no information on deaths between 1842 and 1922.)

It appears to me that you don’t understand what you think I don’t understand.

My example of deaths at 6, 15, 47 and 72 was an example which clearly shows that 2 people died before the average age of 35 and 2 died afterwards.

With a lower infant mobility the number of people who exceed the average age greatly will be small.

Perhaps another example will help. One dies at 1, one dies at 10, one dies at 20, one dies at 30, one dies at 40, one dies at 50, one dies at 60 and the last one dies at 69, average age 35. For those who didn’t die before 21 the average age was 49.8. In this example most people didn’t make it to 54 only 2 did and the last one if born in 4 BCE died in 65 CE. This is an example. However it shows that most people of this generation would be dead 54 years after their birth and as time goes by fewer people will be alive, which was my original point. Do you now understand?

Do you accept that someone born in the USA who was 20 in 2000 would be expected to live longer than someone who was 20 in 1800?

Do you accept that someone who was 20 in 16 CE in Judea or Galilee would be expected to live fewer years than someone born in the USA and who was 20 in 1800?

Ben Radford of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine writes:

Human Lifespans Nearly Constant for 2,000 Years

The fact is that the maximum human lifespan — a concept often confused with "life expectancy" — has remained more or less the same for thousands of years. The idea that our ancestors routinely died young (say, at age 40) has no basis in scientific fact.

This means that those living the longest reached the same age. It does not mean as many people reached those advanced ages. For example a person might reach 100 at any time in history, but the number who did was much fewer 200 years ago than today.

It seems to me that you are implying that Judeans were dying en masse at 30-54 years old when you say: "few people would live past the age of 54 "

I was saying that with a life expectancy of 35 the same number of people died before 35 as afterwards. Therefore the majority of people born in 4 BCE would be dead by 50CE. Mathematically as soon as more than half the people born in 4 BCE were dead a majority (or most) would be dead. Fewer people would live to over the age of 54 than made it to 35. Even today fewer people make it to 54 than 35. The only way this would not be true would be if no-one died aged between 36 and 54. Do you now understand? I then went on to write that because of the war 66-70 even fewer people would be alive in 70 CE than in 50 CE. Do you think no people born in 4 BCE would have died between 66 and 70 CE?

I did suggest that during the war 132-35 Jews died en masse and the majority of those in Judea who didn’t die were enslaved and removed from Judea.

[neilgodfrey]

Could anyone give a summary of the "new" arguments or a link to the "recently published works".

Michael Kok posted a biblio a few years back at https://ntmark.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/secret-mark/

My recommendation on that list is Tony Burke's Ancient gospel or modern forgery?: the Secret Gospel of Mark in debate

A keyword search on WorldCat indicates no monograph has been published since Burke's volume -- apart from a work by Connor exploring the "intellectually corrupt nature of apologetic New Testament studies" the Secret Mark debate has uncovered.

[DCHindley]

It was actually quite common for trusted slaves to be sent abroad by their masters in order to carry out tasks for their master. … Andrew Criddle

I did have the impression that trusted slaves could and did travel, but I don’t think they could travel where-ever they wished without the permission of their masters, which was the point I was making. A Christian slave in Rome in 80 CE could not just travel to Palestine if the mood took them.

I think Andrew was thinking of slaves of masters with extensive and/or far-flung estates in various regions and provinces. In this case, they are supplied with travel papers to establish ownership (for the authorities) and letters of introduction (for bankers, friends whose estates the slave may visit along the way, etc.). A trusted slave may have a great deal of authority over other slaves (at the estates, at businesses owned by the master, over retainers of various kinds even some freed slaves

In the early Roman Empire city dwellers were probably quite mobile.
Labour Mobility in the Roman World may be of interest. (It is primarily about mine workers but discusses broader issues).

Andrew,

Mine workers were such a specialized lot that they were unique in their ability to make contracts to extract ore as "independent contractors," as opposed to slave labor. While I do think at least some mine workers were slaves (the movies popularized this notion), the return on investment seems to have been lower than those utilizing motivated contractors.

Unfortunately I cannot remember for the life of me where I read that.

Edit: Maybe I can. Kenneth W. Harl, Coinage in the Roman Economy: 300 BC to AD 700, chapter four, "The Augustan Coinage, 30 BC - AD 235," mainly pages 80-83, and footnotes on pages 408ff. The subject is mining ore for the production of Gold, Silver, Copper or Tin bullion. Basically, one calls in specialist contractors, who may or may not bring in slave labor (depends of a lot of conditions, mainly recent wars with northern and northwestern tribes, otherwise labor was almost all free). These contractors were highly prized and rewarded for their efforts.

DCH

[rakovsky]

Do you accept that someone born in the USA who was 20 in 2000 would be expected to live longer than someone who was 20 in 1800?

Yes, but a difference doesn't show how much difference. You could in both cases have at least a significant minority of people who lived to 70 years old. AFAIK, most people born in 1980 and who make it to 20 are expected to hit over 70.

Do you accept that someone who was 20 in 16 CE in Judea or Galilee would be expected to live fewer years than someone born in the USA and who was 20 in 1800?

Same answer as above.

Anyway, even if I were to agree that there was an "age holocaust" of first generation Christians in 70 AD, I could still return in 70 AD-133 AD and learn important information, like whether Nazareth even existed, and for how long did it exist. Did people living in Nazareth or the neighboring town of Sepphoris ever hear of Mary and Joseph with children James, Jude, and Jesus? If these were towns of 500 people each, it seems like something they might have heard about. If you asked me about friends my parents had when I was a kid, I could tell you even when I became old because the names would ring a bell. Maybe they would have heard that Mary was a virgin and they thought it bunk or they knew the Ben Pandera story.

Maybe in your own town or neighborhood there are local legends that get passed down since civil war times. There are in mine.
Check out the story of the Jersey devil and its relationship with an illegitimate child in Leeds, NJ. That one goes back from before the US Revolution.

I was saying that with a life expectancy of 35 the same number of people died before 35 as afterwards. Therefore the majority of people born in 4 BCE would be dead by 50CE. Mathematically as soon as more than half the people born in 4 BCE were dead a majority (or most) would be dead. Fewer people would live to over the age of 54 than made it to 35. Even today fewer people make it to 54 than 35. The only way this would not be true would be if no-one died aged between 36 and 54. Do you now understand?

Each statement you just wrote makes sense logically, but the statement about life expectancy of all persons born can be misleading someone into thinking that people who survived to teenage years when Mary was raising Jesus as a teen would have died off en masse and left few survivors past 54 years old. This is why I said: "Check the statistics for those who make it into adulthood. Life expectancy shoots way up."

Do you think no people born in 4 BCE would have died between 66 and 70 CE?

No, some people would have died then. Two Jameses, Peter, and Paul at least died before 70 AD.
I just think that it would not just be a mere handful of people living in the broad region of Nazareth-Sepphoris-Cana who knew Jesus when he was a teenager and who lived to 70 AD.

I did suggest that during the war 132-35 Jews died en masse and the majority of those in Judea who didn’t die were enslaved and removed from Judea.

Right. I was talking about the period before then: 1st c. to early 2nd century. There would be people who you could find realistically in the Nazareth or Bethlehem areas who knew or heard the backstory about Jesus' family through rumors when they were growing up.

• Maybe they would tell you the ben Pandera story.
• Maybe they would say there was no Ben Pandera and that Mary and Joseph were the same age and were always happily married with no birth questions or issues.
• Maybe it would turn out that Mary and Joseph belonged to some "Nazarene" or Essene style sect. One modern writer imagines that Mary was part of some ancient sect "virgin" birth ritual.
• Mary and John the Baptist's mother were supposedly cousins according to the Gospels. John the Baptist is sometimes thought to be an Essene or have been part of some sectarian tradition. Maybe Mary was connected to that.
• Maybe they would say Nazareth never existed until c. 100 AD and that they heard about "Jesus of Nazareth the son of Mary" but their parents always thought it was weird because the parents never knew him growing up. (I think this one is unlikely, but it would be worth ruling out via interviews)

Whatever it would turn out to be, it would be interesting. All kinds of famous people like Stalin or Karl Marx or Lincoln can have interesting personal private backstories that their acquaintances or acquaintances' children know and can come out within a generation of their passing. I know from doing historical research.
Take for example the stories about Karl Marx in his old age going to synagogue to pray with tallit and candles and supposedly having a star of David for a while on his headstone. Or Khruschev's son seeing Khrushchev seeming to pray at his mother's grave. Or Stalin's guards seeing him pray at the Kremlin chapel during WWII. Or Janos Kadar seeing a priest in his old age.

“Aunt Mariska (Kádár‘s wife) called me: ‘My husband wants a priest’ she said,” Németh, who headed the country’s last Communist-era government in 1988-1990, told Reuters. “I still remember the Catholic priest whom I found, he was a short man called Bíró, I think,” he added. “I don’t know whether Kádár atoned to him or what he told him, you can’t ask a priest about such things. There is no way to find out now — everybody has died since.” Németh said this happened in late May or early June, 1989. “This (Kádár‘s request) struck all of us as a complete surprise,” he said.
http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/201 ... ore-dying/

This could be the priest:

...the election of three Catholic peace priests (Imre Biro of Esztergim....) to the Hungarian parliament in June 1985.
their candidacy had been expressly approved by Cardinal Lekai.
Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe, By Sabrina P. Ramet

Marshal Budyonney's children told a Russian news program how their father had a vision of the Theotokos where she said that no bullet would strike him, and it never happened despite his horse being killed from under him and other Marshals getting killed by Stalin.
Maybe not all of these stories turn out to be true, but they are the kind of interesting off the record accounts that a good researcher can find out a long time after the events have transpired.

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

Could anyone give a summary of the "new" arguments or a link to the "recently published works".

Michael Kok posted a biblio a few years back at https://ntmark.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/secret-mark/

My recommendation on that list is Tony Burke's Ancient gospel or modern forgery?: the Secret Gospel of Mark in debate

A keyword search on WorldCat indicates no monograph has been published since Burke's volume -- apart from a work by Connor exploring the "intellectually corrupt nature of apologetic New Testament studies" the Secret Mark debate has uncovered.

Thanks for that. Kok's article is a very good overview.

[Michael BG]

I could still return in 70 AD-133 AD and learn important information

I still think it would be much better to travel in time and space with the ability to converse in all languages to actually be there when the events were supposed to take place.

Some events would be problematic, it would not be possible to witness the Virgin conception and Mary might not be willing to discuss it.

The resurrection would also be problematic if the accounts in Acts of Paul seeing the resurrected Jesus are correct as not everyone saw him, and of course even in the gospels the disciples don’t recognised him.

Even if you could travel to all places you think Jesus might have been raised after 70 CE you will have problems. How many people would know the family? If you went to the street where my father was brought up I don’t think anyone would remember him or his family. It depends on how infamous the family was. My expectation would be that if you found any stories about Jesus you would not know if they were reliable just like the stories we have today.

I was saying that with a life expectancy of 35 the same number of people died before 35 as afterwards. Therefore the majority of people born in 4 BCE would be dead by 50CE. Mathematically as soon as more than half the people born in 4 BCE were dead a majority (or most) would be dead. Fewer people would live to over the age of 54 than made it to 35. Even today fewer people make it to 54 than 35. The only way this would not be true would be if no-one died aged between 36 and 54. Do you now understand?

Each statement you just wrote makes sense logically, but the statement about life expectancy of all persons born can be misleading someone into thinking that people who survived to teenage years when Mary was raising Jesus as a teen would have died off en masse and left few survivors past 54 years old. This is why I said: "Check the statistics for those who make it into adulthood. Life expectancy shoots way up."

I think you are reading what you think is there and not what is there. Therefore you misunderstand what I wrote and it doesn’t seem to make any difference how many times I try to explain what I wrote you still misunderstand me.

Maybe in your own town or neighborhood there are local legends that get passed down since civil war times. There are in mine.
Check out the story of the Jersey devil and its relationship with an illegitimate child in Leeds, NJ. That one goes back from before the US Revolution.

In my country the revolution was in 1688 and we had three civil wars 1642-46, 1648-49, 1649-51.

I just think that it would not just be a mere handful of people living in the broad region of Nazareth-Sepphoris-Cana who knew Jesus when he was a teenager and who lived to 70 AD.

If one of your grandparents lived in a town and have not live there since they were 30 and you returned 40 years later how many people do you think will have stories to tell about your grandparent? Then remember whatever the number, for Galilee it would be fewer depending on the different life expectancies for those who reached 30.

[DCHindley]

Ah,

Just realized where I was reading about the mines, and how some individuals who participated in the exploitation of their ores were able to achieve a degree of prosperity and mobility that was unusual for the Roman Imperial era in general:

M. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire (1926, 2nd ed revised by P. M. Fraser, 1957. Reprint 1963)

[340] Our information on the exploitation of the natural resources of the Empire, apart from agriculture, is very scanty indeed. What we do know relates chiefly to mines and quarries. The exploitation of forests and the industries connected with it, and the method of extraction of salt remains almost a blank in our knowledge. A few remarks of Pliny and some scattered inscriptions do not allow us even to attempt a general characterization of those departments of public economy. As regards mines and quarries, we know that most of the workings were situated in the provinces. Italy was rather poor in mineral resources, and no efforts were made by the state to exploit in an intensive way such as did exist. A striking example is the marble industry of Luna. The rich quarries producing the beautiful white marble of Carrara were never worked on a very large scale, and not before the end of the Republican period. The Romans preferred to import different kinds of marble from far distant places, Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, Numidia. The explanation of this curious fact probably lies in the peculiar conditions of the economic and social life of Italy in general. In the later days of the Republic the state endeavoured to stop the development of mining in Italy by reducing the number of workmen allowed by law in mines. The [341] reason appears to have been the fear that large numbers of slaves concentrated in the mines might become dangerous hotbeds of revolt, while the employment of free men would diminish the sum total of peasants and agricultural workmen so urgently needed on the estates both of the Roman aristocracy and of the city bourgeoisie, especially after the servile wars in Sicily and Italy. Besides, there was no need to work the mines and quarries of Italy intensively, since the state possessed the rich mines of Spain, Macedonia, and Asia Minor, and gradually added to them those of Dalmatia, Noricum, and Gaul. There was no state monopoly of mines either under the Republic or under the Empire. The state was, indeed, the largest owner of mines, being heir of the former proprietors alike in the Hellenistic kingdoms and in the Western provinces, where they had been state property. But in Gaul Rome apparently did not concentrate all mines in her own hands, nor did she object to the discovery and exploitation of new ones on the large estates of the Gallic nobility. In Republican times most of the mines owned by the state were leased to private capitalists, who formed powerful associations or companies. Such was the case at least in Spain and Sardinia, and we may suppose that the same system was applied to the mines in the East, both in Asia Minor and in Macedonia. The labour employed by such companies in Spain and Sardinia was mostly, if not wholly, that of slaves, who were brought in masses to work in the mines and in the quarries. In Macedonia, on the contrary, the work was done mostly by free men who rented single pits either directly from the state or from the mining companies.

When large mining districts in the new provinces (Gaul, Britain, Noricum, Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Dacia in the West, and the new Asiatic provinces and Egypt in the East) passed into the possession of the state and the emperors, the system of exploitation became more diversified through adaptation to the special conditions of each district. We cannot enter into details here, but in general it may be said that our scanty evidence attests all the possible types of exploitation in the various mines of the Empire: leasing to large capitalists (as in Noricum, Dalmatia, Gaul); leasing of single pits to small entrepreneurs, whose rent was collected either by tax-farmers or by state officials; exploitation of quarries by contractors (redemptores), who received [342] fees proportionate to the amount of material extracted, the work being done under the supervision of civil or military officers; extraction of minerals and stone by convicts (damnati in metallum) or slaves under the supervision of soldiers; the use of compulsory labour, especially in Egypt. Side by side with these different systems employed in the public and imperial mines and quarries, there existed all over the Empire mines and quarries owned by private people who paid a certain amount of the produce to the state. How large this amount was, and how the collection of the payments was organized, we cannot say.

The general trend of imperial policy in regard to mines and quarries was gradually to eliminate the great capitalists and to concentrate the exploitation of them in the hands of state officials. Preference was given to the letting of single pits to small contractors, especially in the time of Hadrian and his successors. Such was the system used, for instance, in Spain in the mining district of Vipasca, as attested by the fragmentary inscriptions found there, the content of which is derived from a special law which regulated the exploitation of the mines. The part of the intermediaries was confined in practice to the exaction of the rents and of the other taxes due from these small concessionaires. The rules of Vipasca are based on the theory that half the yield of each gallery belongs to the state and half to the individual who is prepared to expend his capital in the extraction of the mineral. It is a matter of dispute, with which we are not concerned here, whether this principle derives from the rules governing the discovery of treasure hidden in the earth, or from the very ancient system of exploitation of domanial land by means of coloni partiarii. It is, however, important to emphasize that the emperors adopted the same system in the exploitation of mining districts as in public and Imperial lands, aiming at encouraging the initiative of small contractors. Later, this system seems to have given place to the direct exploitation of the mines by means of convicts and by the use of compulsory labour.

We can observe an interesting fact in the development of the most important mining districts, and particularly with reference to the extraction of metals. The final introduction of monetary economy throughout the Empire, even in those regions which had not previously used money as a means of exchange, increased the demand for precious metals, particularly silver. Hence came [343] the efforts of the Roman government to annex to the Empire one mining district after the other, and to organize them in a more efficient manner. The further increase in demand, particularly of silver, and the gradual exhaustion of some silver mines, for example those of Spain, caused the government grave, though not insuperable, difficulty. Efforts were made to attract miners to the silver-mines by the grant of certain privileges and to adapt the value of the coinage to changed conditions. The difficulty, however, must not be exaggerated; there was no question of the complete exhaustion of silver-yielding mines. If in the third century a.d. the silver crisis became acute, this was the result not of the exhaustion of the mines, but of the chaotic conditions of the period. The great problem, in the mining industry no less than in agriculture, was not the lack of material, but the lack of workers; not shortage of metalla, but of metallarii. When in the fourth century the Empire had surmounted the crisis, the main preoccupation was not to find fresh mines, but fresh labour with which to exploit the old ones.

Kenneth W Harl, Coinage in the Roman Economy: 300 BC to AD 700 (1996)

[80] The mining of mineral deposits in the provinces was the other great source of fresh bullion. Archaeological excavations are confirming the picture found in late Roman legal texts that mining was a perpetual cycle of opening and closing many small-scale operations as miners quickly exhausted easily worked surface deposits by “open-cast” methods or panned for fluvial gold. In the first and early second centuries a.d., gold strikes in Spain, Dalmatia, and Dacia, and steady production from silver mines in Spain, the Balkans, and eastern Anatolia dumped fresh bullion on the markets of the Roman Empire. The impact of Roman mining upon currency and prices at least equaled that of the richest late medieval strikes in Central Europe, and it was only dwarfed by the fabulous Spanish American silver production that brought on the price revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The imperial peace provided optimal conditions for the exploitation of mineral deposits so that the output from mines for the whole of classical antiquity peaked during the two centuries between the reigns of Augustus and Septimius Severus (193-211). Emperors suppressed brigands, provided military escorts for bullion shipments, and appointed procurators to impose efficiency in mines. A revolution in transportation during the imperial peace reduced costs and facilitated distribution of bullion and coin. For example, after Augustus secured the mines of northwestern Spain by 15 B.C., Spanish gold and silver could be shipped across the Bay of Biscay and conveyed by military highways to the mint of Lugdunum (Lyons) where mint workers turned bullion into aurei and denarii which were then shipped via Gallic highways and canals to the armies on the Rhine. The Roman state mobilized manpower on a scale hitherto unparalleled by a mix of inducement and compulsion not unlike that employed in colonial Latin America. Imperial authorities transferred officials and soldiers to the most lucrative mines. Seasoned miners, such as the Dalmatians who signed on to work in the Dacian goldfields, were lured with contracts offering good pay, board, and perhaps a tacit understanding that miners [81] could cart off unreported production.26 Roman officials and contractors exploited at a profit even relatively small or almost inaccessible deposits (such as Dolaucothi in Wales) by deep mining techniques or “hushing.” Roman hydraulic engineering expertise prevented flooding of shafts at deep levels so that miners worked strikes to exhaustion over the course of two or three generations. During their boom years, big mines generated tremendous sums of gold and silver that had an immediate impact on the empire’s currency. Three complexes of mines — in Spain, Dalmatia, and Dacia — met the growing demand for Roman coins during the first and second centuries.

81n26. See Richardson JRS 66 (1976), 142-43. For wages and inducements to lure miners to Dacia, see S. Mrozek, “Die Goldbergwerke im romischen Dazien,”ANRW2,6 (Berlin, 1977), pp. 99-104. For transfers of skilled staff, see Edmondson, JRS 79 (1989), 96, nn. 99-100 and P R. Lewis and G. D. B. Jones, “The Dolaucothi Gold Mines, I: The Surface Evidence,” Antiquaries Journal 49 (1969) 244-72.

[82] A third complex of mines that poured gold into the empire’s money supply for well over a century was added when Trajan annexed Dacia in 105-6. Although no figures survive for the volume of Dacian gold, hints in literary sources and archaeological finds of shafts, tools, and mining contracts on wax tablets suggest that operations in the second century reached levels comparable to those of the Spanish and Dalmatian gold mines.

DCH

[rakovsky]

If one of your grandparents lived in a town and have not live there since they were 30 and you returned 40 years later how many people do you think will have stories to tell about your grandparent? Then remember whatever the number, for Galilee it would be fewer depending on the different life expectancies for those who reached 30.

I knew an elderly man who left his village in a very far away country when he was in his young 20's and I visited his village about 60 years later and people remembered him as a child. He had relatives (nephews and great nephews) there too and they all talked about him, even the ones who never knew him but only heard stories passed down. There was a special story about this man too, and people would have had a general sense that something unusual had happened.

So to answer the question, if my grandfather lived there with his family, I think some people he went to school with might know him, and also more people would know the family. So if I spent enough time researching it, I think I could find someone who knew the grandparent, either from school or church or work. Professional investigators do that kind of thing.

[neilgodfrey]

If the subtext of the question about longevity in past times is that witnesses would have been able to verify claims about Jesus appearing in "print" 40 years after his death --

As far as I am aware it is only in the field of biblical studies that a criteria for historicity of a past event is that "there would have been witnesses around to verify or discount the event" for anyone enquiring about it.

We know how easily fabricated events and persons can be presented as "historical" and people do believe in them despite the theoretical ability to check with supposed eyewitnesses. Voices can be raised protesting about fabricated events and they will simply be ignored and forgotten by those who "will to believe" what they want to believe.

There are many such persons and events in history -- one of the most remarkable that always amazes me is the way Scottish history and customs were fabricated and seized the popular imaginations despite voices crying out that they were all false. Hugh Trevor-Roper's "The Invention of Scotland" is well known.

Gilbert Garraghan, author of "A Guide to Historical Method", pointedly noted that even a gap of twenty years from the death of a person to the first publication of some detail about his life must naturally make the story suspect.

Let's think a moment about our hypothetical person trotting off from Corinth to find some of the 500 witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus to see if what Paul was writing to them was true. Would his inability to find any be enough to convince true believers back in Corinth? Paul would only have to call him a liar to turn much of his flock against the "false-witness". So long as enough of a critical mass of people believe in order to carry on the tradition that is all that is required for the myth to be established.

Conversely, one can always find eyewitnesses to UFOs and ghosts to verify their historical reality.

This idea that "it must be true because people could have confirmed it with eyewitnesses" is yet one more of these idiosyncratic criteria unique to biblical studies scholars.

[Michael BG]

Many things in the gospels and early Church history are the kind of thing that someone living in the 1st or early 2nd c. could find out, but someone living 400 years later would not. The New Testament is written for a 1st-2nd c. audience. Someone living in the 1st c. could check up on the facts for themselves too in controversial areas.

Now you write:

So if I spent enough time researching it, I think I could find someone who knew the (person). Professional investigators do that kind of thing.

You have now accepted that that it might well be difficult even where you and the people who know the tales live in the same country and speak the same language. It would be even more difficult for a Greek to get Jews to open up.

If one of your grandparents lived in a town and have not live there since they were 30 and you returned 40 years later how many people do you think will have stories to tell about your grandparent? Then remember whatever the number, for Galilee it would be fewer depending on the different life expectancies for those who reached 30.

I knew an elderly man who left his village in a very far away country when he was in his young 20's and I visited his village about 60 years later and people remembered him as a child. He had relatives (nephews and great nephews) there too and they all talked about him, even the ones who never knew him but only heard stories passed down. There was a special story about this man too, and people would have had a general sense that something unusual had happened.

You didn’t say how many people knew the story and I expect you can’t say, Hadith like, who were in the chain of transmitters.

If you spoke to my cousin he could tell you something about a cousin told him by another cousin, she had been told it by her mother and her mother was told it by her mother. It was told as being true as the female cousin knew her mother believed it to be true. There is no evidence it is true. It could well have been a story created by my grandmother because she thought her daughter-in-law ensured that her son (the father of the cousin to which the story refers) had no contact with her.

As I have already pointed out you could not check the reliability of the stories you are told.

It is questionable that you could find any reliable information after 70 CE. … This assumes that all these groups had stories about Jesus et al and that they would honestly discuss them with you. There is also the problem of knowing if what you are told is true or not, even if the person telling you believes it to be true.